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■ LIFE AND SPEECHES of 

JOSEPH CULLEN ROOT 

and the 

Glories of Perfected Woodcraft 

' Farrar Newberry. 




Class. 
Book. 



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Copyright N°. 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 




*£, 




Joseph Cullen Root 



LIFE AND SPEECHES 
OP 

Joseph Cullen Root 

AND 

The Glories of Perfected 
Woodcraft 

By 

FAEEAE NEWBEEEY 



Author of 
"A Life of Mr. Garland of Arkansas?' 

and 

"James K. Jones, the Plumed Knight of 

Arkansas" 



THE SIFTINGS HERALD PRINTING CO. 

PUBLISHERS 

ARKADELPHIA, ARK., 1914 



HS\5\o 



Copyright 1914, By 

FARRAR NEWBERRY 

All Rights Reserved 



JUN 19 1914 

>CLA37G648 
Kb) 



Dedicated 
To My Father 



TABLE OF ILLUSTKATIONS 



Photo of the Grand Old Man .... Frontispiece / 

Opposite Page / 
Photo of the Author 48 v 

Photo of W. A. Fraser, Sovereign Com- 
mander 96 

The New W. O. W. Building, Omaha 160 v 






TABLE OF CONTENTS 

Page 
PAET I. 
Autobiography of J. 0. Eoot 9 

PAET II. 
Addresses of J. C. Eoot 35 

PAET III. 

Chapter 

I. The Beginnings of Perfected Woodcraft. . 69 

II. Early History and Eise of the Craft. . . 83 

III. The Canadian Jurisdiction and First 
Sovereign Camp 100 

IV. The Wonderful Progress of the Craft 

to Date 108 

V. Co-Ordinate Branches of Perfected 
Woodcraft 120 

VI. Citizenship and the Sovereign 127 

VII. The Uniform Eank of Woodcraft 138 

VIII. Literature's Influence and the Press 

of Woodcraft 148 

IV. In Sickness and in Death 159 

X. The New W. O. W. Building 170 



PART I. 

ME. BOOT'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY 



JOSEPH CULLEN BOOT, FATHEE AND 
FOUNDEB OF ALL WOODCKAFT 

In the winter of 1912, when I was contem- 
plating writing the life of Joseph Cull en Boot, 
knowing that his life was worth preserving to 
posterity, and feeling that Sovereigns every- 
where, as well as Neighbors, Cirelers, and mem- 
bers of other branches of the great Craft, 
would be appreciative of an accurate written 
account of the great Founder's noble career, 
I took up the matter with none other than Mr. 
Boot himself. 

The old gentleman generously granted me 
of his time, and even went to the trouble of 
diligently setting down upon paper an account 
of his ancestry, life, and work, for my book. 
This was to be added to as time and opportun- 
ity afforded this busy man. Unfortunately, 
the "pale spectre" cut short our purpose on 
last Christmas Eve day, when the beloved Sove- 
reign Commander "shuffled off this mortal 
coil" at Hendersonville, N. C, and the ad- 
ditional part of this work, so far as he person- 
ally was concerned, must perforce be omitted. 

There have, as Sovereigns generally know, 
been several short sketches of our great Found- 
er penned by various admirers — men close to 
him and familiar with the inner motives and 
workings of his life — during his life-time. And 
I feel that no tribute of my own could be 



10 Life and Speeches op Eoot 

either so authoritative or pointed as the ac- 
counts of others who were associated with him 
during the early years of the Order; and that 
neither their nor my account could be half so 
interesting and accurate as what the late 
Sovereign Commander had to say about him- 
self. 

It is for this reason that I think it best, 
for the purposes of this volume, simply to set 
down, with a few interpolations and explana- 
tions of my own, the account he gave of him- 
self in written form for the express purpose of 
this volume. 

AN AUTOBIOGEAPHY 

We have a genealogy of our family up to 
1870, which I am intending to bring down to 
date. I have gathered a large amount of in- 
formation as to the origin of tbe family and the 
record of individual members thereof, which 
has already cost me several thousand dollars. 
The coat of arms you will see on the enclosed 
letterhead. 

We are satisfied that the oldest trace of 
the family is found in Normandy, and that 
the original name was DeEode, as documentary 
evidence shows that in making wills, 
deeds, etc., in the thirteenth century, the fath- 
er who signs his name De Eode mentions his 
sons by the name of Eoote. 



Life and Speeches op Eoot 11 

Evidently Michael De Eode was a feudal 
lord in special favor with the king. With this 
assumption we have clearly traced the family 
down through the centuries. None of these 
descendants were especially famous, although 
there is a traditionary record showing that one 
of the name was the wife of a royal personage 
and her daughter became queen of Scotland 
and England. But this tradition, although 
well verified in the genealogy of the kings, 
makes the name Katherine Eoet, or Eote. An 
expert is now tracing this clue, but it is at 
present indeterminate. 

My direct ancestors came to Connecticut 
from Badby, England, about 1635, and the two 
brothers, John and Thomas Eoote, who were 
the progenitors of the American families, re- 
pose side by side with their wives at Somers, 
Conn. A substantial marble headstone at 
their graves shows that even the earliest of the 
name favored a monument at the grave. 

In the Indian and Colonial Wars, mem- 
bers of my family served. Two were at the 
fall of Quebec, and three or four were at the 
Indian massacres in Massachusetts. 

The father of General U. S. Grant was 
named after Judge Boot, whose portrait hangs 
in the courthouse in Hartford Conn. He be- 
came a Supreme Court Judge and had charge 
of Colonial troops of the state during the Eevo- 
lution. 



12 Life and Speeches op Boot 

A monument erected to the memory of 
the first settlers of Farmington, Conn., has the 
name of John Boote, my ancestor, who was also 
one of the first settlers of Farmington, Conn. 
He was a farmer and interested in woolen and 
hat manufacturing. One of his family, a young 
woman, was of a poetical turn of mind, and 
her manner was so peculiar that she was ar- 
rested as a witch during the crusade against 
witchcraft, but fortunately escaped the con- 
sequences imposed for this crime during this 
exciting period in our national history. 

My great, great grandfather, Joseph, 
removed to Westfield, Mass., and I think was 
a farmer. My grandfather, Joseph A., was 
a school teacher many years and was of a mus- 
ical turn, being especially fond of the violin. 
He made several of these instruments himself, 
and we have two of them as relics. Experts 
claim that they are superior instruments. For 
several years he kept a tavern on the highway 
in the town of Otis, Mass. 1 noticed in a 
history of the movement of the troops during 
the War of 1812, that, responding to what was 
then called an alarm, a company of soldiers 
stopped at Boot's tavern. The keeper's father, 
whose name was also Joseph, lived with him 
up to the time of his death, and died at the 
advanced age of ninety years. My own grand- 
father died when he was about sixty-two years 
of age from pneumonia. His children (my 



Life and Speeches of Boot 13 

uncles and aunts) were: Lawrence Mattoon, 
who died at Seneca Falls, N. Y., Washington 
M., John Quincy, Harriet and Caroline At- 
water. Caroline lived and died at Westfield. 
My uncles were all prosperous business men, 
and were interested with my father in the 
banking business at Lyons, la. 

My grandmother was a descendant of Jon- 
athan Clark, a Revolutionary soldier. Her 
mother was a daughter of Colonel Mattoon, 
who came to America with De Lafayette's 
army. After the death of my grandfather, she 
married Horace Lattimer, of Hartford, Conn., 
a man of considerable wealth. She is buried 
in that city. 

Born at Chester, Hampden County, Mass., 
December 3, 1844, the son of Aurelius Clark 
and Eliza Abbott Boot, I could in brevity say 
that from earliest childhood I was naturally 
inclined to be the leader in everything. Among 
my playmates I was always "Captain of my 
Company," and the boys usually expected me to 
lead in their sports, excursions and expeditions 
over the mountain ranges in Hampden County, 
and our rambles through the valleys. In school 
I had a faculty of preparing compositions on 
various subjects, and was regarded as some- 
what precocious for my interest in and knowl- 
edge of political affairs. Back early in the fif- 
ties, when national issues were exciting, when 
Millard Fillmore was nominated by the Nation- 



14 Life and Speeches of Eoot 

al American party for the presidency, I used to 
discuss, both with the boys and with grown 
people, the issues before the people and the fal- 
lacy of the native American party. 

My father was a member of the Massachu- 
setts legislature, and it was a common saying 
that his little boy was opposed to him on the 
political issue of the day. This was the same 
time when Daniel Webster was a member of 
the Massachusetts legislature. 

In 1854 we moved to Lyons, la. My fath- 
er had been cashier of Belvidere Bank, Belvi- 
dere, 111. We had lived a year in Belvidere where 
my father moved in 1853. He now established 
the Koot Bros. & Co. Bank at Lyons. 

Diretly opposite, on the east bank of the 
Mississippi Kiver, was the terminus of the 
Galena and Chicago Union Kailway, and there 
was a controversy as to whether the railroad 
should be extended from Lyons westward to 
Omaha, or whether the Iowa Land Co., which 
had located two miles below at a point then 
called New York (and afterwards Clinton, la.) 
should promote and build a railroad to the 
same terminal point. 

Two projects from Lyons were undertak- 
en, one of them having a large government 
grant of land, and the Clinton project interest- 
ing Oakes Ames of Massachusetts in their 
scheme. Though only ten years of age, I took 
an active talking interest in the matter, and 



Life and Speeches op Eoot 15 

the excitement, I remember, was intense. The 
town of Lyons was building rapidly. The 
town of Clinton started slowly. The outcome 
was that the Clinton project was successful, 
while hundreds of thousands of dollars were 
wasted on the two Lyons propositions. 

The editor of a local paper took consider- 
able interest in me, permitting me to contrib- 
ute nearly every week articles of my own in- 
vention in the railway controversy, the author- 
ship being a secret between us. The articles 
created a deal of comment, both favorable and 
unfavorable. 

When only sixteen years of age, my father 
having taken possession of a stock of goods 
consisting of books, wall paper, stationery, and 
jewelry, I was given exclusive and entire charge 
of same for over a year. I managed the bus- 
iness in such a way that the indebtedness 
sought to be paid was earned from the profits 
in the business while the goods unsold, turned 
over to the original owner, were of as much 
value as the original stock turned over to me to 
be handled. This was my first experience in 
the business world, and I was awarded suf- 
ficient for my services to defray the expense of 
attending Cornell College, Mt. Vernon, la., for 
an entire year. 

Lincoln's first memorable campaign oc- 
cured while I was engaged in this business, 
and a considerable proportion of the profits 



16 Life and Speeches of Root 

of the business was realized from selling 
medals and badges. I attended county fairs 
and employed boys to sell these badges indus- 
triously. 

Several sensational books were published 
at this time, notably Helper's "Impending 
Crisis/' of which I have a copy in my library. 
This contains a powerful protest against the 
demands of the South in the slavery matter. 

I made a trip to Chicago to attend the Re- 
publican National Convention, and was pres- 
ent in the Wigwam erected for the use of the 
Convention when Abraham Lincoln received 
his nomination. The thunderings of the can- 
non on the roof of the Wigwam as soon as the 
result was obtained are still reverberating in 
my imagination; and the procession which im- 
mediately formed, headed by Pat Gilmore's 
band from Boston, with two men bearing fence 
rails on their shoulders in the lead, passing 
through the streets of Chicago during the even- 
ing, in which I participated with boyish eager- 
ness, shooting Roman candles which had been 
distributed in bundles along the line — all of 
this is fresh in my memory and causes a thrill 
of enthusiasm reflecting from the tremendous 
excitement of that evening long ago. My lat- 
er journey to Chicago in 1865 to look upon the 
face of Abraham Lincoln in his casket as the 
body lay in state at the City Hall while en 
route to Springfield, and the procession which 



* 



Life and Speeches of Root 17 

took live hours to pass a given point, the uni- 
versal expressions of sorrow, as if every indi- 
vidual had lost a near and dear friend — this 
also is impressed upon my mind. 

During the years following, until I had 
reached the age of twenty-one, I was a student 
at the Northern Illinois College at Fulton, 111. 

One episode in the meantime, however, was 
somewhat dramatic. When tlie news came of 
the fall of Sumpter, all was excitement. Every- 
one was anxious for news. The president's 
call for volunteers aroused everybody, and 
boys of my age were anxious to become enrolled 
as soldiers in the Union army. The First Iowa 
Regiment had hastily departed southward. 
Recruiting for a second regiment proceeded 
rapidly. Martial music was heard on the 
streets every day and long into the night. 

As I was under age and not of vigorous 
health, I could not enlist; but one year later 
I enlisted in Company "K 7 " 26th Iowa Regi- 
ment, was elected Orderly Sergeant, and was 
determined to go to war; but my father, wiser 
than I, knowing that I was under eighteen 
years, of weak constitution and that I never 
had been subject to any hardships, cancelled 
my enlistment, and suggested that I become 
the correspondent of the boys whom I knew 
in the several regiments, keeping them posted 
on affairs at home while they were away. 

Thus compelled to stay at home, I carried 



18 Life and Speeches of Eoot 

with me a memorandum book, and noted down 
everv little item of local interest that I thought 
the boys would like, and devoted much of my 
time to sending them letters in the different 
regiments from our community and vicinity. 
In return, I received from them frequent let- 
ters from the camp, on the march, and im- 
mediately after every skirmish or battle in 
which they participated. From these letters 
our home papers received the first reliable in- 
formation concerning our boys in the field 
during the long years of that awful period. 

During my vacations from school, I was 
clerk in a store, and later on became a sales- 
man, traveling out through the state of Iowa 
for several months. I conceived the idea of 
obtaining a commercial education, and in 1864 
went to Eastman Business College at Pough- 
keepsie, N. Y., where after fourteen weeks' 
studious effort I was awarded a diploma. 

Eeturning to Lyons, la., I was employed 
at once by Hill and Thomas, who owned and 
conducted the large flour mill and elevator. 
Both parties removing a little later to South 
America, the entire business was left in my 
charge and control, and, in combination with 
another mill, we manufactured about three 
hundred barrels of flour per day. The entire 
management — keeping the books, handling the 
funds, and general details, was entrusted to 
me. I did have an experienced man looking 



Life and Speeches op Eoot 19 

after the purchasing of wheat and the details 
of the mechanical part of the business. 

In 1867, I was married to Louise M. Ins- 
tee, who was born in Davenport, la., March 11, 
1849, and who died on September 30, 1910. We 
had two sons, Harry Joseph and Alanson Ins- 
lee. My wife was descended from English an- 
cestors, one of whom financially assisted 
George Washington during the struggle for In- 
dependence for a large amount, which was nev- 
er repaid by the heirs, although Congress was 
many years after petitioned therefor. Another 
was an eminent judge in the state of New 
York. My wife's father was born in Water- 
loo, N. Y. He engaged in business in Cincin- 
nati, and later moved to Davenport, la., where 
Mrs. Eoot was born. 

In 1860 I started the Lyons Young Men's 
Association at Lyons, la., as a literary society 
for debate, sociability, and the acquisition of 
a library. This association is still in exist- 
ence and has about ten thousand volumes on 
its shelves. 

About 1870 I was appointed Deputy Unit- 
ed States Eevenue Collector. (Sovereign Com- 
mander Eoot served four years in this capacity, 
and rendered faithful service in collecting mil- 
lions of dollars for the government. Mr. Eoot 
was admitted to the bar in Clinton County, 
la., having acquired a knowledge of the 
branches of the common law under the tutelage 



20 Life and Speeches of Root 

of Albert W. Wheeler, a "lawyer of ability and 
standing/' who was Mr. Root's life-lang friend.) 

Four years later — about 1871 — I com- 
menced the insurance business, and also leased 
the flour mill and elevator which I had form- 
erly managed for the owners, and engaged with 
me W. D. Ogden, a young man from Elmyra, N. 
Y. The firm was known as Root and Ogden. 
We conducted this business with reasonable 
success, manufacturing and shipping flour to 
the Eastern markets. 

In 1877, together with another partner, 
we obtained exclusive right to introduce the 
Bell telephone in Whiteside and Carroll 
Counties, 111., and Clinton County, la. My 
partner, having gone to Boston, for the pur- 
chase of certain goods, returned to tell me that 
they were stringing wires in that city, all to 
terminate at one point, where they were to be 
connected so that people at the end of the wires 
could talk to each other by certain connections 
at this central station. We were satisfied that 
we should try the same plan at Clinton. We 
contracted for thirty sets of instruments, for 
which we were to pay a royalty. We imme- 
diately got busy and constructing a rude switch 
board in front of the shoemaker's bench in 
the rear of the store, we got a primitive tele- 
phone exchange in operation before the Bos- 
ton exchange was ready for business. We 
could therefore say with truth that we put in 



Life and Speeches of Root 21 

the first telephone exchange in the United 
States, though it was very small and unpre- 
tentious. We have congratulated ourselves in 
this direction. 

Later on we were given the exclusive right 
in Adams, Taylor, and Ringgold Counties, la., 
and after about four years' effort, having then 
over five .hundred telephones in use in our 
territory, we sold our franchise, receiving a 
very handsome consideration therefor. 

During these years I was quite active in 
local politics, having become chairman of the 
Congressional Committee. I delivered speeches 
in nearly every town in our congressional dis- 
trict. This was not for my profit, as I was 
not at all inclined to seek official positions. I 
did, however, serve two terms as Mayor of Ly- 
ons, and one term as Alderman in the town's 
Council. These were by no means profitable 
offices, and were not always pleasurable, as in 
a town of 6,000 people a local officer has many 
puzzles to unravel, many complications to ad- 
just, and local dissentions to reconcile. 

(I suppose modesty forbade Sovereign 
Commander Root's stating here that at a con- 
vention held in Davenport, la., he w r as named 
as a candidate for the office of Representative 
to Congress, but declined the honor.) 

Late in the sixties, a railway project was 
being promoted, which afterwards became the 
Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Paul, from Sabula, 



22 Life and Speeches of Root 

la., to Council Bluffs, with promise of being 
constructed. One of the abandoned railways 
that had been graded northward and eastward 
appeared to me could be utilized and possibly 
could head off the Sabula project. In my al- 
most boyish eagerness to do something for the 
upbuilding of my locality, I wrote a series of 
articles for a local paper, calling attention to 
the fact that there was the road already graded, 
ready for the bridges, culverts, and iron. It 
should be immeadiately availed to accomodate 
the proposed trans-Iowa railway. These ar- 
ticles created considerable attention. I urged 
that public meetings be called at once and the 
project be pushed. Public meetings were held 
in the principal towns of Clinton, Lyons, 
Maquoketa, and Anaimosa, our town proceed- 
ing to organize a company. Sixty thousand 
dollars of stock was subscribed, and the other 
towns did nearly as well with their stock. 
Work was begun, ties were purchased, imple- 
ments were procured. Seven miles of Swedish 
iron rails were bought, and the first spike was 
driven with quite a demonstration and much 
excitement. Soon afterwards the Northwest- 
ern Eailway took charge of the project and 
substituted heavy rails and finished the road 
to Anaimosa, a distance of about eighty miles. 
While it did not head off the Sabula propo- 
sition, it caused several new towns to material- 
ize, adding to the commercial importance of its 



Life and Speeches of Root 23 

initial points. The authorship of my articles 
was kept a secret by the editor, not even my 
own father being advised as to my having start- 
ed the interest in the proposition, and it has 
been a subject of conjecture ever since. 

In 1879, I joined the first fraternal life 
insurance society, called the V. A. S. Society, 
and confined to the state of Iowa. I attended 
its general meeting as a delegate and found 
that it had no systematic plan of collecting and 
disbursing its funds. I was appointed a com- 
mittee to formulate a system of receiving and 
disbursing its funds, and for general manage- 
ment. The year following I was elected its 
president. The little order prospered very 
nicely during the three years that I managed 
its affairs, I receiving the princely salary of 
flOO per annum. When its membership had 
reached the 15,000 mark, there being a disin- 
clination to extend its business beyond the 
borders of the state, I concluded that a society 
with a broader field of operation, formulated 
as a compromise between the two rival orders 
of A. 0. U. W. and K. of H., might be built 
and become a power for good in the land. It 
would enable the wage-worker and the man of 
family to provide protection when it was most 
needed. 

So, in 1882, I prepared the first prospect- 
us of the Modern Woodmen of America, which 
I had printed at Carroll, 111., by a printer who 



24 Life and Speeches of Root 

had never paid his telephone rentals. I wrote 
the rituals of the order, which were printed 
later by C. D. Dorr, of Dubuque, la., under 
the positive injunction of secrecy. 

How T was elected from session to session 
as head of this order; how it grew and pros- 
pered; how certain of its members objected to 
spreading its objects and business outside of 
certain states ; my belief that its beneficent 
provisions and objects should be advanced in 
every state and in Canada, at least, outside of 
the Union ; my resignation as head of the 
Order, and my founding the Woodmen of the 
World as the vehicle of Perfected Woodcraft— 
these things you already have in your excellent 
history. 

During these years from 3860 to 1862, I 
managed a lecture bureau as a side line to my 
business. I thus came in contact with the 
popular speakers of the day, and became per- 
sonally acquainted with Horace Greely, Bay- 
ard Taylor, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, P. T. 
Barn um, Fred Douglass, Balph Waldo Emer- 
son, Josh Billings (Henry W. Shaw), Artemus 
Ward, Henry Ward Beecher, Theodore Tilton, 
George Francis Train, Willian Witt Sikes, Mrs. 
Scott Siddons, Schuyler Colfax, Olive Logan, 
U. S. Grant, Benjamin Harrison, and several 
other notables whose names I do not now recall. 

I undertook another railway project, 
known as the Chicago, Lyons and Pacific Bail- 



Life and Speeches of Root 25 

way, of which William Scott, brother of the 
famous Tom Scott, of the Pennsylvania system, 
was president, and I was secretary. I still 
have in my possession the books and papers 
of that organization. It was designed to occu- 
py the abandoned right-of-way and grade of 
the two original roads intended to be built 
from Lyons, la., westward. Our objective 
point in the new project was to be Sioux Falls, 
S. I), and the scheme contemplated a high 
bridge built from bluff to bluff across the Mis- 
sissippi River. There were many discourag- 
ing circumstances attending this proposition, 
and our inability to interest eastern capitalists 
compelled us to defer further effort until more 
favorable conditions existed. 



Thus breaks off the autobiography, and it 
is needless to try to add to it, except perhaps in 
those places where the great humility of the 
man has forbidden his relating his honors. 
Quoting from the sketch by John W. Geiger, 
who perhaps knew Mr. Root in his lifetime as 
intimately as any man knew him : "Mr. Root's 
standing where best known was the highest. 
A liberal contributor to various charities; a 
member of the Omaha and Commercial Clubs; 
a 'governor' in the popular Knights of Ak-Sar- 
Ben, Omaha's most progressive organization; 
an adivser in the Child's Saving Institute; 
President of the Nebraska Fraternal Congress; 



26 Life and Speeches of Root 

Vice-President of the Lion Bonding Company; 
Past President of the Associated Fraternities 
of America; prominent in Masonry, Odd Fel- 
lowship, and Pythianism, and connected with 
various other public and manufacturing enter- 
prises, no citizen stands higher in general es- 
teem and reputation." 

Tn the chapters which follow I tell of the 
work of the Great Fraternalist in building the 
Order we love so well today. I tell of the 
hardships endured by him and the little band 
of co-workers with whom he wrought the vehicle 
of Perfected Woodcraft. But no account, no 
words of beauty chiseled from the gold of the 
very choicest English language, can fittingly 
portray the glory of a character like 
that of Joseph Cullen Boot. So many acts of 
kindness and generosity the great man covered 
and kept covered from the gaze of the public; 
so many deeds of unselfishness in private life; 
so many youths educated at his hand ; so many 
crippled, sick, halt, blind, and otherwise afflict- 
ed rendered financial aid ; so many individuals 
encouraged from the lethargy of their despair 
into the paths of a new trial in life, a new hope ; 
so many of those unnoticed generosities as 
would take a volume within itself to tell what 
Mr. Boot would never tell, except perhaps to 
the most intimate friend. The nearest I can 
come to showing accurately the value of his 
life is merely to say that he lived out in each 



Life and Speeches of Root 27 

day's simple and unassuming life every prin- 
ciple he had for so long preached to others 
through the fraternities in which he was a 
dominating personality. 

The story of his death is as simple and af- 
fecting as the full account of his life would be. 
It was with lack of pomp and show, and a 
total abandonment and resignation to the will 
of Him whose New Testament teaching he had 
for three decades and more tried to make prac- 
tical among men. On Christmas Eve day, 1913, 
the mightiest Oak in the great Forest of Wood- 
craft fell to earth. 

Early in November the Sovereign Com- 
mander answered the call from several South- 
ern States for visits and speeches. Having 
stopped in Louisiana, the tour was continued 
through Mississippi, Georgia, Alabama, Flor- 
ida, Virginia, and North Carolina. A large 
class introduction was about to be held at 
Hendersonville, N. C, and he responded to 
the urgent invitation of Sovereign Manager 
Lewis to attend. On the morning of the sev- 
enteenth he was seized by a chill, and suffered 
that day on the way to the Carolina City. 
From that time on through the days until his 
death, the Sovereign Commander, though bear- 
ing up bravely all the while, grew noticeably 
weaker. Telegrams and letters poured in up- 
on him by the score, and he read them all with 
the very greatest relish and appreciation. 



28 Life and Speeches of Eoot 

Symptoms of bronchial pneumonia were found, 
and his condition became more serious. Tow- 
ards nightfall of Christmas Eve day, however, 
the Sovereign Commander seemed stronger 
than he had been for days. His mind was per- 
fectly clear and he seemed at physical ease. 
When those who were near to him had said 
good-night, Mr. Eoot asked the nurse for a 
drink of water, and having taken it, "without 
a sigh, without a struggle, as peacefully as a 
babe, he fell into the long sleep from which 
there is no waking." 

The body of the late Sovereign Commander 
was first taken to Lyons, la., his old home, 
where by special request it was allowed to lie 
in state. On Sunday morning, December 28, 
the body was met by a company of Sovereign 
Officers and others at the Union Station, Oma- 
ha, and was taken to the City Hall, in the 
rotunda of which it again lay in state, guard- 
ed by members of the Uniform Rank until it 
was conducted to his late residence from which, 
on Monday morning, December 29, it was 
borne to Forest Lawn Cemetery and placed in 
the magnificent mausoleum which Mr. Eoot 
had prepared for himself and family. 

I can give in closing no better summary of 
the character of Joseph Cullen Eoot than simp- 
ly to quote the eulogy of Morris Shepard, spok- 
en on this occasion at the Founder's tomb : 

"We are today surrendering to the tomb 



Life and Speeches of Root 29 

the mortal remnant of one of the most notable 
figures of this or any other generation. The 
greatness of Joseph Cullen Root will become 
more and more apparent as the wings of time 
sweep on. It is hardly possible for his con- 
temporaries to grasp the magnitude of his work, 
the significence of his life. It is as if we stood 
at the base of some great mountain and at- 
tempted to measure its dimensions, to com- 
pare it with adjoining peaks and ranges. When 
the advancing years shall have removed us 
sufficiently far from the present period to en- 
able us to gain a true perspective of the deeds 
of Joseph Cullen Root, to compare them with 
the deeds of others, his name will leap to the 
very forefront of the earth's anointed, and his 
will be as pure a glory as shall ever be accord- 
ed to the sons of men. 

"If men are to be judged by the good they 
do, the fame of Joseph Cullen Root is secure. 
It may be said without exaggeration that he 
has done more to promote the cause of practic- 
al brotherhood than probably any other man 
of his time. And brotherhood is the ultimate 
ideal of the human race. It matters not what 
material advancement the earth may make, 
what the march of time may bring, humanity 
will never have a higher goal than love of man 
for fellowmamj Joseph Cullen Root founded 
two organizations devoted to the promotion of 
fraternity that acquired a combined member- 



30 Life and Speeches op Root 

ship of more than 2,000,000 before God raised 
him to the life above. He lived to see a distri- 
bution by these organizations of nearly two 
hundred millions of dollars to the beneficiaries 
of deceased members. When we think of the 
homes that have been thus preserved, the fam- 
ilies that have been thus protected, the widows 
and the orphans that have been thus shielded, 
we may begin to obtain some idea of the scope 
and splendor of his work. In the truest sense 
he was a benefactor of mankind; in the truest 
sense he was food to the hungry and feet to 
the lame. The lesson of his life is that it is 
better to serve than to rule. 

"The author of 'Home, Sweet Home' de- 
served immortality and obtained it. And if 
the man who sang of home desired and ob- 
tained such recognition from posterity, what 
should be said of the man who provided homes 
for multiplied thousands of the human race? 
Sweet as are all the melodies that describe 
the home, sweeter, yes, sweeter still, is the 
song of the dollars that drop from a Woodman 
certificate into the lap of widowhood, the song 
that drives the mortgage from the roof and the 
wolf from the door. The home is the founda- 
tion of all progress. Without it civilization 
would be a farce and anarchy would be inevit- 
able. In having done so much to preserve the 
home Joseph Cullen Root has performed a 



Life and Speeches of Root 31 

labor that will be trumpeted from everlasting 
unto everlasting. 

"While fashioning a ritual for the Wood- l 
men of the World, the great order over whose 
destinies he presided with such conspicuous 
success for nearly a quarter of a century he con- 
ceived the idea of erecting a monumnt at the 
graves of all departed Woodmen. He thus pro- 
duced what may well be called one of the most 
effective human symbols of fraternity. Today 
more than 45.000 monuments rise above the 
graves of Woodmen throughout the United 
States. The Woodmen monument is today 
recognized not only as a distinctive character- 
istic of Woodcraft, not only as an evidence of 
the originality and genius of Joseph Cullen 
Koot, but also as a tribute to the man who 
sleeps beneath it. It teaches the fundamental 
truth that above social, political, and financial 
attainments are to be placed the permanent at- 
tributes of the human heart. It bears to every 
man the knowledge that by taking the neces- 
sary steps to protect his family and to save 
his home he/ may attain a distinction higher in 
the esteem of heaven than that of the most 
pampered child of wealth and fame. In send- 
ing this message through the Woodmen monu- 
ment to mankind Joseph Cullen Eoot has not 
only given an enormous impetus to the idea of 
brotherhood, to the doctrine of equality, but 
has also erected for himself within the hearts 



32 Life and Speeches of Root 

of men a monument that will endure when the 
pyramids are dust. 

"He had an unexcelled capacity for organ- 
ization. This is evidenced by the unparal- 
leled growth of the Woodmen of the World 
under his suprvision. In addition to his 
executive capacities he had a lovable person- 
ality. His relations to all mankind, from the 
humblest to the highest, were marked by gen- 
iality, by kindness and by consideration. We 
who were privileged to associate with him both 
personally and officially, know how powerless 
are any human terms to express our affection 
and appreciation of him, our sympathy with 
the surviving members of his family. 

u We may pay him no higher tribute than 
to say that by reason of his presence in the 
world there are more homes and happier homes. 
There are fewer tears and fewer sighs. There 
is less poverty and less despair. The prayers 
of the widowed and the fatherless accompany 
him to judgment. The love of millions goes 
with him to the gates of God. The memory of 
his services to humanity will flourish in the 
souls of men till deep shall call to deep no 
\ more." 



PAET II. 



ADDKESSES OF J. C. EOOT 



'CELEBRITIES I HAVE MET' 



The first eminent man I met was Louis 
Kossuth, the Hungarian patriot. I was only 
6 or 8 rears of age when he was touring this 
country, accompanied by famous men and an 
elaborate military escort. A splendidly dec- 
orated railway train, with a special car for 
this distinguished guest and his staff, made a 
brief stop at Chester, Mass. Nathan Root, my 
uncle, known as the "Father of the Village," 
which was located on his farm, held me close 
to the open window where Kossuth was seat- 
ed. I remember his kindly face and noted es- 
pecially his fedora hat and the black ostrich 
plume draped thereon, which became a popular 
headgear with many of his admirers for some 
time thereafter. I recited a poem which had 
been taught me, a laudation of the distinguish- 
ed visitor. Kossuth cut an orange, handing 
me half of same and said: "Share with me." 
I was the most envied person in town because 
of this graceful recognition. 

When 16 I was invited to Chicago, from 
my home 136 miles west, by George Leslie, who 
was killed two or three years later in the 
Union army during a battle in Virginia, to 
attend the convention that nominated Abra- 
ham Lincoln the first time as a candidate for 
president of the United States. We were ad- 
mitted to the "wigwam," a temporary build- 
ing erected for the meeting of the convention, 



36 Life and Speeches of Root 

and obtained choice front seats in the gallery 
quite near the rostrum. No tickets or admis- 
sion were necessary. It was "first come, first 
served." I was intensely curious to get a 
glimpse of the famous politician ; being a "vor- 
acious reader/' their names were familiar to 
me. I was particularly anxious to see Hor- 
ace Greeley. When he appeared I gazed upon 
his face with awe, noted his light overcoat 
and the fringe of whiskers under his chin. 
Willian H. Seward I heard make an open air 
speech prior to the convention. I never have 
seen a more earnest and enthusiastic assem- 
bly. When the final ballot had determined 
the result and it was announced that Abraham 
Lincoln was nominated, it seemed as if "pande- 
monium had let loose." A cannon on the roof 
was fired several times. There was a rush 
from the galleries to the street. The nomina- 
tion of Hannibal Hamlin of Maine was tame in 
comparison. A procession was hastily formed 
on the street, headed by two men bearing fence- 
rails on their shoulders, said to have been made 
by Lincoln. Gilmore's band, uniformed in 
gray and red, that came with the Massachu- 
setts delegation, followed. We "fell in line" 
with thousands of excited men, some singing 
"John Brown's Body," etc., others shouting 
for "Old Abe, the Bail-Splitter." Eoman can- 
dles were distributed generously. I had sev- 
eral bundles handed me, which I fired with boy- 



Life and Speeches of Root 37 

ish delight. I never saw Lincoln in life, but 
when his body was being conveyed to Spring- 
field, I visited Chicago and stood five hours, 
while the cortege, composed of every military 
and civic organization in and about Chicago, 
passed by. The casket was placed in the City 
Hall. The people filed through four abreast, 
dividing two on each side, from about 5 o'clock 
in the evening, continuing all night and until 
time arrived to start for Springfield next day. 
I arose about five o'clock in the morning and 
passed and repassed two or three times that I 
might study his face as thoroughly as possible 
in the brief time allowed. After my third 
transit the line had extended over two blocks 
and hundreds were added every hour thereafter. 

I do not believe that the world has ever 
held such universal sorrow as was evidenced 
by the hundreds of thousands who witnessed 
this mournful pageant. 

Soon after General Lee's surrender and the 
final review of the Union army, General U. S. 
Grant made a short stay at his old home town, 
Galena, 111. I accompanied several of my Iowa 
townsmen on an excursion to Galena to sup- 
plement the formal welcome extended the Gen- 
eral by the people of that city. In reply to a 
message from Galena inquiring what he desired 
done for him, he replied, "Build a side-walk to 
my place." The citizens did even better than 
this; they either built or purchased a fine 



38 Life and Speeches op Root 

brick house, having a large lawn around it and 
a good sidewalk to the principal street. A 
streamer across the main street having these 
words: "General, That Sidewalk is Built," 
greeted his eyes when he arrived. 

Our party visited his new home and re- 
ceived a handshake from the General. When 
I approached and announced my name, he said, 
"Boot? that was my father's middle name. I 
wish to talk with you as soon as the people 
have all passed." He invted me into the house, 
also the young lady who was with me, and in- 
sisted on our taking lunch with his family. I 
now have in my possession a four-page letter 
written by Jesse Boot Grant, the General's 
father, in which he explains how he was given 
the name. His father had great admiration 
for Hon. Jesse Boot, whose distinguished ser- 
vices during the American Bevolution and sub- 
sequently as a supreme judge in the state of 
Connecticut endeared him to the citizenship 
of the New England states. General Grant's 
grandfather, being personally acquainted with 
and a close friend, named his son, the father 
of General Grant, Jesse Boot Grant. 

We were introduced to Mrs. Grant and 
her daughter, Nelly, then a charming little girl 
with whom we romped in the yard after lunch. 
Mrs. Grant had drooping eyelids as her only 
noticeable peculiarity. The General threw 
aside all reserve and conversed with us with 



Life and Speeches of Eoot 39 

animation quite at variance with his reputed 
stolidity when being interviewed on military 
or political matters by persons volunteering 
advice or seeking favors. It was a most de- 
lightful episode on which my mind delights to 
linger. Some months afterward I was favored 
with a personal letter written by him which 
I treasure as an heirloom. 

The first time I met Schuyler Colfax, ex- 
vice-president of the United States, and au- 
thor of the Odd Fellow's ''degree of Kebecca," 
was at Lyons, la., on the occasion of an Odd 
Fellows' anniversary celebration. Mr. Colfax 
and a cousin of his and her husband were en- 
tertained at my father's home. The cousin be- 
coming dangerously ill, Mr. Colfax remained 
several days, until, after the careful and untir- 
ing nursing of my mother, the cousin had re- 
covered. I was assigned the pleasant duty of 
introducing Mr. Colfax to the immense crowd 
of people assembled on that occasion and with 
considerable trepidation I proceeded to spread 
the wings of the American eagle until the bones 
actually cracked and the feathers filled the air. 
So absorbed did I become that when I had 
capped the climax by shouting my carefully 
prepared peroration and was to announce his 
name, I couldn't think of it "to save my life," 
so I turned quickly, looking into his amused 
and smiling face, and whispered, "What is your 
name?" He said, "Colfax." Then, turning to 



40 Life and Speeches op Root 

the audience I announced his name. He arose 
and advanced to speak. Tremendous applause 
resulted. He always insisted, with a humor- 
ous glint in his eyes, that the people were cheer- 
ing my speech instead of greeting him as the 
distinguished orator and famous vice-president. 

This incident appeared to impress Mr. Col- 
fax favorably and was the beginning of a per- 
sonal friendship which lasted as long as he 
lived. We corresponded and I have many let- 
ters carefully preserved, showing his confidence 
and esteem. He never came within a hundred 
miles of my home without wiring me to come 
to him for a visit. It will be remembered that 
Mr. Colfax died in Sovereign Adviser Falk- 
enburg's arms in the railway station at Man- 
kato, Minn. 

Visiting Indianapolis two weeks before the 
presidential election, I accompanied a close 
friend of Benjamin Harrison to the Harrison 
home to spend an evening. We met Judge 
Doyle of Ohio there. This was the first time I 
had met Mr. Harrison. I was introduced to 
his future second wife — a most charming lady. 
Being so near the time when Mr. Harrison was 
elected president of the United States 
the scene is indelibly impressed on my 
mind. The two judges discussed "prob- 
abilities" with Mr. Harrison and the possibility 
of some sensation being sprung like the "Bum, 
Eomanism, and Rebellion" declaration dissem- 



Life and Speeches of Root 41 

inated in the last hours of the Blaine-Cleveland 
contest was the principal topic, and several 
"possibilities" were suggested. Mr. Harrison 
was dignified and confident, but not boastful. 
There was no mirth or desultory talk. It was 
an earnest, thoughful conference in which I 
took little part, but was an interested and dis- 
creet listener. I am glad to say I w-as regard- 
ed as worthy of confidence and certain not to 
make known the matters discussed. News- 
paper reporters were keeping tab on everybody 
calling on Mr. Harrison and undertook to in- 
terview me. I stated that I had been simply 
making a social family call. 

I went to the White House, some months 
later, at the regular Wednesday afternoon re- 
ception. When I reached Mr. Harrison in the 
line of visitors, much to my surprise he called 
me by name and requested me to come up to 
his office as soon as the reception was over. 
I gladly availed myself of the invitation, and 
said to him that I had called to pay my res- 
pects; was not seeking any appointment for 
myself or any of my relatives or friends. He 
grasped me by the hand and said he was glad 
to meet one man who was not asking favors. 
I spent a most delightful hour with him while 
several politicians were patiently (or impa- 
tiently) waiting their turn to interview the 
president. He assured me on parting that my 
card would always be an "open sesame" when- 



42 Life and Speeches op Eoot 

ever convenient for me to call. Some months 
afterward I sent in my card and, although 
several were waiting a chance to see him, I was 
immediately invited in, escorted by him to the 
"living rooms" and introduced to his wife, 
daughter and "Baby MeKee." I had a pleas- 
ant interview of over an hour and was pre- 
sented a beautiful boquet of rare flowers. 

Tt is not strange that I should honor his 
memory as a man of sympathy and friendly im- 
pulses. 

I was favored with a seat among the 
prominent spectators, back of the chairman's 
station, when James G. Blaine, "the plumed 
knight. " was nominated for the presidency. 
Fred Douglas and his wife sat nearby. Mr. 
Douglas lectured in our town several times ac- 
ceptably. T was present at both conventions 
when General TT. S. Grant was nominated for 
president, and was interested in the gyrations 
of Conkling and "Me too" Piatt, as well as other 
prominent politicians of that period. 

I had a slight acquaintance with Henry 
Ward Beecher, who lectured in several towns 
under my auspices. He was the most earnest 
man I ever knew. Be had no patience or 
time with or for "small talk." He was a nat- 
ural psychologist and held his hearers spell- 
bound when addressing them. Of massive 
form and head, even the most careless could 
not fail to recognize in him a master mind. 



Life and Speeches of Koot 43 

He had a pleasant word for everybody who 
spoke to him, but was not inclined to engage in 
animated conversation. He appeared to be 
constantly absorbed in his own thoughts. 

Ralph Waldo Emersan wrote in my album: 
"A score of airy miles reduces rough Monad- 
nock to a glen," and appended his autograph. 
One morning I called at his room just after 
breakfast. He was lying on the bed reading. 
1 apologized for intruding. He very grace- 
fully said: ,k I have just finished reading a 
chapter of French philosophy. I only read 
one chapter every morning as food for thought. 
It's very robust reading; very robust read- 
ing, indeed. " Mr. Emerson was a compan- 
ionable man, considerate and friendly with 
everybody regardless of his status or require- 
ments. 

Bayard Taylor, in his day the greatest 
American traveler, w^as a man of large stature, 
cosmopolitan in his manners, an inveterate 
smoker. Walking beside him on several ram- 
bles over the hills, I felt as insignificant as a 
poodle trying to show himself beside a St. Ber- 
nard. Smoking his pipe vigorously, he would 
stride at an easy pace, keeping up a stream 
of reminiscences of travel of which the sur- 
roundings reminded him, and asking questions 
about the locality, its traditions and history. 
He was one of the most interesting and enter- 



44 Life and Speeches op Boot 

taining celebrities with whom I ever became ac- 
quainted. 

Horace Greeley, the eccentric journalist, 
during many years wielded a powerful influ- 
ence in politics and farm development all over 
the United States. One evening I had made 
a somewhat effusive introduction and the aud- 
ience was on the alert to see him rise and ad- 
dress them. But he didn't arise. I turned 
about and lo and behold, he sat in his chair 
asleep! I "stirred him up" and he proceeded 
to talk. His voice was light and uttered in 
a tiresome monotone, his lectures without 
humor or incidents to illustrate. People were 
usually disappointed, but said it "was worth 
the money to see him." 

He would go to his room as soon as the lec- 
ture was finished and write editorials for the 
Tribune until 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning. 
I remember an old farmer calling on him and 
annoying him by asking his views on sheep- 
raising. I railroaded the agriculturist out of 
the room as soon as I could decently do so. 
In one town an Irish washer-woman put in 
most of the night starching and polishing Mr. 
Greeley's shirts. She almost went into spasms 
when she saw him crowd them into his old 
"carpet bag," which was too small to lay them 
in nicely, by punching them down with his 
fist and wrinkling them badly. He wore "top 
boots." 1 had to remind him every morning 



Life and Speeches of Koot 45 

I was traveling with him that he was putting 
the boot on the wrong foot. 

Mr. Greeley, like Mr. Beecher, was "self- 
absorbed," careless in his attire, and exceeding- 
ly sensitive. I was not surprised to hear that, 
in the opinion of many, he died from grief when 
defeated for the presidency. 

With all his idiosyncracies, he was beloved 
by hundreds of thousands of people, and es- 
pecially by the intelligent farmers of our coun- 
try. 

Albert Pike, the nestor of Scottish Kite 
Masonry, a Confederate general, a linguist and 
a scholar, entertained me at his Washington 
home a few years since. Tall and well propor- 
tioned in stature, swarthy, with long, floating 
hair, he attracted attention wherever he was 
seen. An elaborate statue of General Pike 
occupies a prominent place in Washington. 
He lived frugally, accepting no salary, except 
sufficient to pay actual necessaries. He filled 
his room with caged, rare birds and meditated 
amid them while they chirped, caroled and 
sang to him. His writing on the origin, history, 
philosophy, and teachings of "Free Masonry" 
are the fruit of deep research of foreign records 
and publications in different ancient and mod- 
ern languages which he had acquired and read- 
ily translated. He was a wonderful man; in 
manner gentle, but frequently emphatic in the 



46 Life and Speeches op Boot 

use of adjectives to give expression to his views 
when excited. 

Josh Billings (Henry W. Shaw) I knew as 
an auctioneer at Poughkeepsie, N. Y. He was 
of slim stature and nervous temperament. His 
quaint spelling and grotesque philosophy made 
him quite a reputation as a humorist. T have 
his autograph: "Yures verry mutch, Josh Bill- 
ings." The first time I ever saw "Josh" he 
was selling a horse at auction. The horse was 
nearly as "raw-boned" (he remarked) as him- 
self. 

These are the most notable of the celebri- 
ties I have met and was more or less acquaint- 
ed with, and still there are others. 



Life and Speeches of Boot 47 

"WOODCKAFT'S MOTIVE" 

Delivered at Jackson, Tenn., June, 1911 
My friends, you will agree with me that 
I do not make a mistake in bringing the little 
man (Dr. Schleh, Sovereign Lecturer) along 
with me. He does not seem to like women 
that carry poodle dogs in their arms, but that 
is because he was born in Germany, where 
women prefer to carry their children rather 
than dogs. 

You have listened to a couple of good 
speeches by Colonel Fletcher and my little 
friend. They were probably too full of praise 
to the Sovereign Commander. 

I often think of my friend, Samuel Kirk- 
wood, governor of Iowa. On one occasion he 
listened to several speeches that did not please 
him. When it was his turn to talk, the plain, 
emphatic governor said, "1 don't think I have 
much to say, but what I will say (taking off 
his collar) will be horse sense." My plight 
is this. The other fellows said nearly every- 
thing I intended to tell you. That is the dis- 
advantage of not getting there first. Once in 
a while one sympathizes with the American 
who visited the Holy Land. He said: "As I 
stood on Mt. Sinai, where Moses received the 
Ten Commandments, 'mid thunder, smoke and 
zigzagging lightnings, I was filled with ador- 
ation. I thought of the Great Law again, and 
taking a stand on an eligible spot, I resolved 



48 Life and Speeches op Boot 

to repeat the Ten Commandments, but lo, I 
could not think of a single one of them!" 

The Woodmen of the World belongs to 
modern thought. It is the creation of modern 
thought. It is the absorption of the cardinal 
elements of the entire life insurance question. 
It has come about through gradual evolution, 
which is a peaeable revolution. Woodcraft is 
current protection transfashioned into whole 
life protection. It has been my ambition and 
effort to make it so firm, so complete, and so 
perfect that it will endure to the end of time. 

Have you ever thought that evolution is the 
one word (hat covers and describes the prog- 
ress of the race from the beginning of history 
until today? The beginnings of racial life 
were crude and savage. The first peoples were 
wild. Cannibalism describes much of the story 
of man. Extermination was the thirst of op- 
posing tribes. Brute force was the final ar- 
bitrament. Two men saw each other in the 
distance. Each one soliquised, "There he 
comes. I must kill him or he will kill me!" 
They met to fight mortally. One, perhaps both, 
fell in blood and death. Little by little the 
race rose to better and yet better civiliz- 
ation. Bead Prescott's Conquest of Peru, also 
his Conquest of Mexico. Contrast the state of 
man, as he described it, with the condition of 
men, women, and children today, then you 
will have some idea of the wonderful improve- 




Farrar Newberry 



Life and Speeches op Eoot 49 

ment that has been accomplished. Brute force 
has given way to justice. Military strength 
will soon give way to universal peace and good 
will. 

The cave dwellers of the past are succeeded 
by families living in palaces of comfort, art 
and happiness. Barbarism is passing away. 
Civilization is coming to all peoples. Homes 
are building on sites of prehistoric caves. 

"City lots are staked for sale, 

Above old Indian graves." 

Woman is now acknowledged man's equal. 
Eeligion, itself, is becoming more and more tol- 
erant. Divisions are healing and uniting. 
Co-operation is the coming word in every de- 
partment of life. Men are beginning to stand 
on both feet and claim the right of manhood. 

All these things have made a society like 
ours possible, and we, in turn, will make such 
conditions more general and more stable. 

The difference between old line life insur- 
ance companies and the Woodmen of the World 
is this: Old line life insurance companies are 
organized for personal profit, whereas we are 
organized for the good of all concerned. 

Our system is a protest against the greed 
of the over rich and an opportunity for the 
poor. 

The paramount issue with us is the pro- 
tection of the American home. Every man 
among us is a lover of home. No higher com- 



50 Life and Speeches op Eoot 

pliinent can be paid a man than to call him 
the protector of his home. Home is the center 
of a man's universe and the circumference of 
his ambitions. There is no larger scope, no 
greater sphere of effort. Home is the one in- 
portant place on earth. Every other place is 
secondary and subordinate to it. Our homes 
are protected against the day of bereavement 
and adversity. One of the happiest boasts 
of the little son or daughter of Woodcraft is, 
"Papa is a Woodman of the World." 

We also have the monument feature. This 
is a new departure. We place monuments at 
the graves of our dead. Each monument tells 
the story: "Here lies a man — a good man — a 
lover of his fellow men." 

This feature is the climax of the fraternal 
insurance system. Each monument says: "Ee- 
member." 

Then we have the old age benefit feature. 
We care for our old men. They are not for- 
gotten nor neglected. When they are 70 years 
old we pay them, annually, one tenth of their 
certificates, thus giving them an income when 
they are too old to earn much in their former 
vocations. Thus they are tided over until they 
are 80 years old. 

Our certificates are incontestible and our 
plan simple, yet comprehensive. There is noth- 
ing in our plan that is not easily understood. 
There are no loopholes through which we try to 



Life and Speeches of Eoot 51 

escape paying our beneficiary obligations, nor 
have we any disposition to do that. Justice 
and promptness have characterized us ever 
since we organized in 1890. We have been con- 
servative withal. Men like Sovereign Fletcher 
have made and upheld laws that have placed 
us safely and consistently at the head of the 
fraternal beneficiary system. We are within 
four per cent, of absolute solvency. In 1912 we 
will be entirely so. We will then have capital 
enough to declare us so. 

We have solved the problem of prejudice. 
We are cosmopolitan. In Perfected Wood- 
craft tongues and nationalities meet and har- 
monize. Elsewhere there may be antipathies, 
not so in our Forests. 

I heard of two local organizations of an- 
other society. One of them was composed of 
Germans, the other of Irishmen. They finally 
held a union picnic. On the morning follow- 
ing, two citizens met. One asked, "Were you 
at the picnic yesterday?" "No, was there a 
picnic?" "Yes, sir; the Dutch and the Irish 
had a union picnic." "How did it result?" 
was the question. "That's where the fun comes 
in," was the reply. "This morning the Dutch 
are all in the hospital, and the Irish are all 
in jail." 

Not so with us. We know no language, no 
creed, no party, no country except the United 
States, and no flag except the Star Spangled 



52 Life and Speeches of Boot 

Banner, under which dwell all the states re- 
united for evermore. 

Once more, let us not forget that we exist 
almost wholly for the home. All else is sub- 
ordinate. ' Protect and defend the home. Make 
every sacrifice for the home. 

"Home, Home, Sweet, Sweet Home." The 
poet is right. Once gone, it is gone forever. 
Now is the time to love and cherish it. Then 
when the chill of death convulses the frame 
and the damp of the dark valley is upon the 
brow, we can pass into the Great Beyond with 
a smile of satisfaction for those we leave on 
the earthly shore and hear "Well done, Sove- 
reign," from the eternal on the other and hap- 
pier side. . 



"MOTHER" 

Miss Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen: 
Upon receiving a letter from Mrs. Burns that 
I was expected to contribute something to 
Mothers' Day program, I wrote to her that I 
could not be here, and therefore had made no 
preparation whatever, and will not, therefore, 
undertake to do more than add a few words to 
those which have been so eloquently spoken 
by Miss Jarvis. 

Home is the foundation place of all govern- 
ment. A well regulated and well governed 
home is a pattern for good government. The 
husband is the president and the wife the 
vice-president of this home, and, as 
in all your laws and by-laws it is provided that 
in the absence of the president the vice-pres- 
ident shall preside, the vice-president usually 
serves more time than the president in this 
home government. That is one reason why 
these homes are better governed. Take a good, 
sensible woman and she can govern the child- 
ren and teach them to be useful to themselves 
and useful to others, to be studious, to be in- 
dustrious, and to prepare themselves for a fu- 
ture good life, better than they could possibly 
be instructed by the president or father of the 
family. 

I never heard, even in "Ten Nights in a 
Bar Room," the little girl say, "Oh mother, 
dear mother, come home with me now ; the clock 



54 Life and Speeches of Boot 

in the steeple strikes two." The mother is not 
out on such occasions. The father, or pres- 
ident may be occasionally, and too often it 
leads to lack of order and good discipline in 
the governemnt of the home. 

Mothers! We speak the word with great 
tenderness, and before I get through I will tell 
you how that word is so impressed upon my 
mind I can hardly speak it without a feeling 
of grief and sorrow. But it depends somewhat 
upon who the mother is. Suppose that you 
were matured in an incubator, the question 
would naturally be which you would recog- 
nize, or for which you would have the most 
endearment, the incubator or the lady who 
pretends to be your mother, who placed you 
there? Then there are unnatural mothers. I 
have been associated with the child saving in- 
stitute in our city, and some of the tales that 
are told me of the cruelty and the inhumanity 
of mothers make me almost doubt the sanity 
of these people. How they abandon their 
children and do not care for them, and how 
they have an aversion to them, and how fre- 
quently they sign legal documents transfer- 
ring them to an institution that they may find 
them homes. Those are the unnatural mothers. 
Those are the mothers who cannot be consid- 
ered as worthy of being mentioned by people 
having admiration for sterling human charac- 
ter. 



Life and Speeches of Eoot 55 

There are none of us but remembers the 
gentle admonition of our mother. I think 
in the latter days the admonitions are more 
gentle than they were a half century ago. I 
think the mothers used to emphasize them 
with the slipper or the switch, or by other cor- 
poral punishment, but modern thought and 
modern civilization and modern education has 
modified this view so that today mothers are 
ruling with the rod of love and not with the 
rod of discipline and punishment. Therefore, 
we find that the children as they mature into 
manhood and womanhood are more consider- 
ate ; they are less inclined to be cruel to others ; 
they are more apt to be fraternal ; they are 
inclined to do that which is for the betterment 
of mankind, to the ones by whom they are sur- 
rounded and with whom they associate. 

Motherhood is really the acme, or should 
be the acme, of every good woman. We remem- 
ber when we took a little maiden as our wife. 
We remember with what joy and gladness and 
pride we introduced her to those whom she 
had not before met, and said, "This is my wife." 
But when the most sincere, when the greatest 
thrill of joy and happiness comes is when she 
is a mother, when we see there before us her 
image personified in the little stranger who 
has come to us, then we feel that pride in that 
mother, and that joy in that child which is 
inexpressible, that delight which no heart can 



56 Life and Speeches op Eoot 

express; for that woman has reached the very- 
highest point of excellency in our view and 
in the view of those who have seen her develop 
and become what she is — the mother of a liv- 
ing child, and as the little strangers come to 
us from time to time, maybe two or three 
or more, around the little hearth-stone we feel 
renewed joy and confidence and love that we 
have a good woman by our side to admonish 
us, and to teach our children, and in her is 
concentrated all the sincere devotion and af- 
fection a human heart can experience, and I 
believe in setting aside a day to bring to our 
minds the thought of our mother. It's a noble 
inspiration that came to this good woman's 
mind and heart who first suggested it, and has 
been so actively engaged in promoting and ex- 
tending it. We are apt to be too prosaic and 
too commonplace in this world. We are apt 
to forget we should have consideration for 
others and show them appreciation of that 
which they have done for us and conduct our- 
selves with all the propriety we can, and de- 
vote our energies and efforts to the upbuild- 
ing of humanity, and for the public or private 
or personal good, and with all that we cannot 
accomplish as much for our future weal as to 
honor and respect the mother who gave us our 
being. 

My friends, that word mother surges 
through me today in a way I can hardly express. 



Life and Speeches of Root 57 

The last words of my dear wife were, "Mother, 
m other. " It seems as though she saw that 
mother's arms outstretched to greet her as she 
passed beyond the dark river. The nearest and 
dearest to us, and the one to whom we look 
as the embodiment of all perfection is that 
good mother who, if gone before, stands ready 
to welcome us when we pass to the other side. 
I thank you. 



KNOWLEDGE, THE SPUE 



Delivered at Louisville, Ky., February, 1911 

I visited your famous City of the Dead, 
Cave Hill, today, and stood by the grave of the 
Founder of the Knights of Honor whose mem- 
ory is as sweet as incense to the people of 
Louisville, and, indeed to many others. 

He probably did not realize what he was 
accomplishing for humanity, but he builded 
better than he knew and enrolled his name 
among the benefactors of mankind. 

The Ancient Order of United Workmen 
had been organized less than one year when 
James A. Demaree, the founder of the Knights 
of Honor, the second Beneficiary Society, con- 
ceived the plan of that remarkable and very 
superior order and improved on the plan of 
the older society. Those were the early days 
of such orders. There was but little avail- 
able data, because experience was lacking. 
The Knights of Honor had their vicissitudes, 
among them the awful epidemic of cholera, 
which swept the city of Memphis and cost the 
order $750,000, requiring as high as three and 
four assessments per month, for consequent 
death losses. This to their lasting credit. 
They kept faith with their beneficiaries and 
paid all legitimate claims, thus establishing 
their claim to the confidence of the public. 

This was the first great American test of 
this new kind of life insurance, and vindicat- 



Life and Speeches op Root 59 

ed the wisdom of the founders as well as the 
possibility of perpetuity, nor is it so singular 
that fraternal life insurance took the guise and 
form of secrecy. This feature may or may not 
have been borrowed from Free Masonry or Odd 
Fellowship. The unknown has its challenge 
and its charm. "To know" has been the spur 
of human thought, from age to age. Knowl- 
edge that his loved ones are protected from 
want has changed the tide of many lives. 

To delve into the secrets of the skies was 
the desire of the astrologer and is the quest 
of the astronomer. The alchemist of old and 
the chemist in the modern laboratory are con- 
joined in their effort to discover some new 
herb, shrub, fluid, or substance that benefits 
man. This is the life work of Mr. Edison, 
who has become a familiar visitor in the realm 
of electric affinity and phenomena. 

How magical, yet how practical his dis- 
coveries and inventions ! 

To discover secrets is the earnest effort of 
the artisan and the manufacturer. A new 
machine or article for daily use is considered 
a crowning achievement. 

The patents in our national department 
are almost numberless. To name them would be 
the task of months. 

The artist desires to execute some new 
masterpiece on canvass or chisel it in pure, 
white marble. 



60 Life and Speeches of Boot 

The lawyCT desires to improve on Black- 
stone and the preacher would ferret the secrets 
of the Deity and realms beyond. Even the dis- 
covery of the American continent was pro- 
moted by this insatiable desire. 

Now, necessity is said to be the mother of 
invention. 

The founders of fraternal beneficiary socie- 
ties, believing such insurance to be necessary, 
sought out plans. They may have borrowed 
from the olden English guides and from their 
friendly societies, which have flourished 
through hundreds of years. Of course the gov- 
ernment applied certain restrictive laws to 
them, such as accountings of stock, publicity, 
etc., but the government was not as exacting 
as the insurance departments of our states. 

The Woodmen of the World was organized 
about twenty-one years ago. A little later, 
auxiliaries were organized. Men cannot live 
alone. 

You may have heard of the man in Colo- 
rado who grafted strawberries on milkweeds 
and thus raised ice cream; so we have both 
the Woodmen of the World and the auxiliaries, 
making things quite palatable. 

The central idea is the desire to do good 
to others. 

We are not always inclined to charity and 
sometimes professed charities are not genuine. 
Perhaps you have heard of the case in Chicago. 



Life and Speeches ov Boot 61 

A gentleman observed a woman who was 
weeping. She carried a baby in her arms. It, 
too, was wailing. 

"What's the trouble ?" asked the man. 

"Oh, I do want my baby baptised, but the 
good minister asks three dollars for the cere- 
mony, and I have no money. Besides, that 
baby is sick and may die unnamed." 

"Madam," said the man, "here is ten-dollar 
bill. Take it to the parson, give him three 
dollars, and bring me the change" 

She did so. He told a friend what he had 
done. The friend expressed surprise at his gen- 
erosity. 

The man gave the following reasons for 
the act: First, it pleased the mother; second, 
it gave the child a name; third, he got seven 
good dollars for the counterfeit ten! 

Of course there were elements of weakness 
in the plans of the earliest fraternal insurance 
societies. The Ancient Order of United Work- 
men adopted a level assessment rate instead 
of collecting amounts proportionate to the 
different ages. 

Years were spent experimenting. We, too, 
have made changes as they became necessary. 
In 1901 we created an emergency fund and 
have acquired over eleven millions of dollars 
reserve money since that time, bringing an- 
nual interest returns of from 4 1-2 to 5 1-2 per 
cent. In other years, before we created this 



62 Life and Speeches of Eoot 

emergency fund, when a member dropped out 
of the order he left nothing in the treasury. 
Now if he drops out he leaves a little excess 
money. 

Societies like ours remind me of that little 
gem of counries lying in mid-Europe, surround- 
ed by powerful rival nations, yet maintaining 
its independence and integrity. In olden days 
when assailed by some foreign foe, they gath- 
ered heaps of brush on the tops of hills and 
mountains. When attack was made at a cer- 
tain point the heap was ignited by the sentinel. 
The signal light was seen by other watchers 
until the mountain tops were ablaze with warn- 
ing fires and the hardy Schweitzer heroes 
massed against the common foe, drove him 
from the borders of the land, and rescued the 
little fatherland from spoiling invaders. This 
is the meaning of Woodcraft. Not to foster 
any sect, creed, or special religion ; not to sup- 
port any cult or superstition, but to unitedly 
act for the protection of our homes. 

In 1890 I visited Canada for the purpose 
of securing a charter for the Woodmen of the 
World in the Dominion. One hundred and 
twenty-three men expressed surprise at our 
monument feature. I assured them that it was 
meant to teach reverence for the dead. I have 
visted Plymouth Eock and old Cemetery Hill 
where some of my ancestors lie buried with 



Life and Speeches of Koot 63 

William Bradford, Miles Standish and John 
Alden. They came hither in the Mayflower for 
freedom to worship God. How thrilling to 
find their graves! Now, when a Woodman 
dies we place a monument at his grave. It 
says to the passerby, "Here lies an honorable 
man." Oh, how graves are neglected! How 
often must we ask, "Who lies here?" or "Where 
does she rest?" Let us remember those who 
have made some mark, and thus place a prem- 
ium on good character. 

Now, the grandest man in all the world 
is the man who protects his family and pro- 
vides for his loved ones after he has passed 
away. 

I am gettng older. It is my great privi- 
lege to comfort the widow and amuse the or- 
phan. 

The other day I met a woman who was 
wearing mourning. We engaged in conversa- 
tion. She wept as she told me how she was 
bereaved. I comforted her and she took it kind- 
ly. I somehow felt that if I had said, "I'm an 
old bachelor, ready to marry," she might have 
proposed to me on the spot! 

There is a little Woodman of the World 
orphan, motherless as well as fatherless, in Col- 
orado. There is $2,000 insurance money for 
him in the keeping of guardians. The Camp to 
which his father belonged will see to it that 



64 Life and Speeches of Eoot 

he goes to college. What if papa had not been 
a Woodman? 

Our doctrines also teach ns to visit the 
bereaved, the aged and the helpless. Paying 
assessments is not all. Some time since I vis- 
ited Oklahoma. Some one told me that the 
Consul Commander of the Camp, an elderly 
man, was unwell. I set out to find him, but my 
principal object was to see a widow and her 
little orphan girls. The little girl asked, "Are 
you Father Eoot?" We became fast friends. 
When my visit in her home was ended she 
tripped with me to the home of the Consul 
Commander, who is a devout Christian. When 
he appeared at his door to let us in, the little 
lass, clapping her hands, shouted: "Here's 
Father Eoot! Here's Father Eoot!" 

The gentleman smiled, saying, "The Bible 
says, 'A little child shall lead them. 5 " 

In conclusion — Let us love our own while 
we have them. Yet sorrow, death and bereave- 
ment come. It is only a quesion of time, then 
the Grim Messenger will appear. Oh, what 
self reproach comes to those who have neglected 
their own. When the eyes are closed, the 
hands are folded, and they are so pale and cold 
and still. 

We would give worlds to have them back. 
Do not wait to pile flowers on their coffins 
and graves. Give them the flowers of love and 
confidence now, while they are alive. Encour- 



Perfected Woodcraft 65 

age them now. Protect now the home in which 
mothers say their evening prayers. Safeguard 
them in the Woodmen of the World. We are 
solvent. We are secure against all possible 
contingencies. Give our Order your personal 
support. 

If I have put spurs to your blood, if I 
have said anything that has made you gladder 
or better, I am satisfied. 

And now, to all, good-night. 



PAET III. 



THE GLOEIES OF 
PEEFECTED WOODOEAFT 



CHAPTER I 

THE BEGINNINGS OF PERFECTED 
WOODCRAFT 

There was woodcraft before the organiza- 
tion of the Woodmen of the World. Its prin- 
ciples are as old as the world itself. Ever 
since Cain "fell out" with Abel and came 
home without the answer to his parent's ques- 
tion, and with family blood on his hands, men 
have had to answer affirmatively the ever-re- 
curring quiz, "Am I my brother's keeper?" 
Since the days of David and Jonathan and 
Damon and Pythias, men, two or more, have 
joined themselves into leagues of peace, pro- 
tection and eternal friendship. An element 
of incalculable import in the early city-states 
of Greece was the "fratry," or brotherhood; 
and then came the "clan," and then the tribe." 
In fact our very word "fraternal" itself 
is of remote origin, being a derivative of the 
Latin word "frater." 

The potency of this brotherly feeling of 
men, in localities, under certain conditions, 
for hazardous undertakings, for wars, for bus- 
iness enterprises, and later even for the pros- 
ecution of peaceful pursuits, is patent every- 
where. The principles for which Woodcraft 
stands are as broad as the earth and as old as 
mankind itself. 

Chief of these principles is that of human 
brotherhood. Next to brotherhood is that of 



70 Perfected Woodcraft 

protection, and this, too, is old, though in the 
lore of the ancients we find few illustrations of 
it, especially where it is shown from husband 
to wife and family ; for then the position of the 
woman was an inferior one. She was a menial, 
a hireling, a slave, a person never to be seen 
upon the thoroughfare. And yet the reverence 
for progenitors, for forebears, and the strong 
tie that bound the family is shown as early as 
the ancestor worship of the Komans. This 
dated from the Koman mythological idea of the 
inseparability of kinsmen. Love of home is as 
old as the hills, or, rather, as old as the es- 
tablishment of any kind of habitation, which 
first came after the hills were set in their places 
Why, even Adam was a home lover, if the ac- 
counts be accurate. No family love I ever 
read about will surpass that of Abraham and 
Sarah; and no faith greater than theirs when 
called upon to sacrifice the boy Isaac upon 
the altar of reverence and hope. Assyrian his- 
tory abounds in instances of family devotion. 
So do those of Phoenicia, Babylonia, and 
Egypt. So does that of Greece; and one of 
the sweetest heritages handed down from the 
prehistoric epoch to the Greek of history, is 
the priceless heroism and faith of women like 
the true Penelope, who, though often besought 
by the unholy enemies of her spouse, Odysseus, 
for her love, persistently shunned them all. 
In an editorial in the Sovereign Visitor, 



Perfected Woodcraft 71 

the official paper of the Woodmen of the World, 
for January, 1910, I find a quotation from 
Hecklethorn's "Secret Societies of all Ages," 
and its subject matter is so good that I give it 
here in substance: 

Centuries ago trade corporations were formed 
in France and Germany, comprising cities 
and for the purpose of protecting the trade of 
companies and peoples. One was the Hans- 
eatic League, which continued for several cen- 
turies. Another, in France, bore the name of 
"Charcoal Burners and Hewers," and was de- 
signed to protect the laboring man. It was 
a secret fraternity and had three degrees in 
its ritual, namely, aspirant, master, and hewer. 
The salt and water, emblems in the initiation of 
the member-to-be, together with a lighted taper 
and a cross, were placed upon a white table- 
cloth spread upon the ground, and the "novice" 
swore upon these sacred emblems of purity and 
preservation to keep the order's secrets. These 
emblems were kept as symbolical of sacred 
things. The ritual was severe and sorrow- 
ful. The catechism of the hewers is full of 
passages of pathetic austerity. The candi- 
date, secreted in an immense forest, looked up- 
on the great canopy of heaven and the carpet- 
ed earth, God's first worshipping place, and 
the following questions were asked, with their 
answers : 

"Whence come ye, cousin of the oak?" 



72 Perfected Woodcraft 

"From the forest." 

"Where is your father?" 

"Kaise your eyes to heaven." 

"Where is your mother?" 

"Look upon the earth." 

"What do you give your father?" 

"Worship." 

"What do you give your mother?" 

"Care and protection." 

"If I must have help, what will you give?" 
Listen to the answer : 

"I will share with you half of my day's 
earnings and my bread of sorrow. You shall 
rest in my hut and warm yourself by my fire." 

Another fraternity was called "The Prod- 
igal Son," with the triangle of letters "S., J., 
P.," and reminded its unliterary membership 
of the wisdom of Solomon, the patience of Job, 
and the repentance of the Prodigal Son. 

The above were some of the ancient "Wood- 
men" lodges. The pioneer woodmen of the or- 
iginal forests were the blazers of the trail for 
civilization, the pavers of the way for us. We 
see them forgetting habitations of comfort, 
ease and plenty, faring forth to parts unknown, 
facing the hardships of unceasing toil, unlimit- 
ed dangers and the terrors of 1he thick jungle, 
the wild beasts, and the still wilder savages. 
Their reward came in the clearing and planting 
and home building, the rescue of a living and 
comfort from the forest primeval. 



Perfected Woodcraft 73 

But this was not enough. The home es- 
tablished by the bravery of independent labor, 
another problem confronted the pioneer. It 
must be protected. The brotherhood idea, 
mutual helpfulness, must be made practical 
in the providence, by reciprocal endowment, 
of supplies. In hard times dependence must be 
made independent, and in the event of the de- 
mise of the family head, some steps must be 
taken for the maintenance of dependent ones. 
Every man who is true, every man who is 
square, wishes to leave behind him something 
to shield his loved ones from poverty, privation 
and despair. The question, how can a poor 
man provide for his family, educate his child- 
ren, and himself enjoy the good things of life 
while he lives and at the same time lay aside 
a competency against the emergency of his 
death, began to knock with insistency at the 
pioneer's door. 

Life insurance was the answer. If ob- 
tainable within the range of the poor man's 
ability to pay for it, it solves the problem. We 
shall see whether the Order which is the sub- 
ject of this work has met and is successfully 
meeting this tremendous issue. 

I have stated that the principles of Wood- 
craft are old. The fraternal organization, 
however, of which our order is so able an ex- 
ponent today, did not reach its perfection un- 
til a very recent date. It is the product of 



74 Perfected Woodcraft 

modern thought and the recent enlargement of 
the human heart, things wholly incompatible 
with the bloody despotism and treachery of the 
dark annals of ancient and mediaeval history. 
Among the fraternal orders of the world, the 
orders of Woodcraft, both in comprehensive- 
ness and humanitarianism, stand prominently. 

The Woodmen of the World Order was 
the outgrowth of a realization on the part of 
Mr. Boot and others of the fact that the Mod- 
ern Woodmen of America, though already at 
this time considerable both in numbers and in 
influence, was not broad and comprehensive 
enough, territorially, to justify, fully, the prin- 
ciples for which it stood. The M. W. A., whose 
first prospectus and rituals were all penned 
by our venerable Sovereign Commander, was 
a successful organization as early as 1890. 
This Modern Woodmen Order was initiated by 
Mr. Eoot in 1852, and its prospectus written 
in that year, the founder intending it to be a 
compromise between the A. O. U. W. and the 
K. of H., having a broader field of operation, 
and enabling the wage worker and the man of 
family to have protection when most of all 
times needed. 

The Modern Woodmen was limited in its 
endeavors by a narrow scope of territory, it 
operating in only a few states of the Union. 
The headquarters of this parent order, now at 
Denver, Col., were first at Lyons, Iowa, the 



Perfected Woodcraft 75 

home of the founder. Under its ritual it had 
only seven or eight states to work. Its prog- 
ress, however, had been so rapid as to attract 
the attention of the insurance world, and this 
was especially true because there were few fra- 
ternities of its kind in the world at that time, 
and there was little competition. On the other 
hand, as the Sovereign Commander later said, 
its responsibilities were large, since, the people 
knowing little of practical life insurance, it de- 
volved upon it to educate them up to a full 
appreciation of its principles, advantages and 
attractions, and a belief in its permanency. 

Mr. Boot at first was made Head Consul of 
the Modern Woodmen, was by acclamation pro- 
claimed the head of the Order at every suc- 
ceeding election, and it was known everywhere 
that he was sustained by the confidence of the 
entire membership. 

A purely democratic organization at its 
incipiency, political complications, as they so 
often do, involved its leader in a, to him, dis- 
tasteful quarrel with some of its would-be 
scions, who aspired, with neither the ability 
nor the enterprise to guide the destinies of an 
order of its kind, to control the society, and 
who "proceeded in the most infamous and un- 
scrupulous way to try to overturn the admin- 
istration and destroy confidence in it." 

The complications arose over the Head 
Consul and Founder's desire to extend its lim- 



76 Perfected Woodcraft 

its to other states ; and it was the narrow ego- 
tism and seculsiveness of these political char- 
latans that prevented it and incidentally 
caused the formation of the new order, today 
known and respected throughout the world — 
the W. O. W. The Head Consul, naturally re- 
senting the actions of the unsatisfied bigots, 
announced to the membership that unless the 
limits could be extended to comprise more ter- 
ritory, and full harmony be restored, he would 
refuse to serve the organization further as 
Head Consul. He was urged by his close 
friend and compeer, Col. B. W. Jewell, now 
Sovereign Adviser of the Woodmen of the 
World, to either accomplish the enlargement 
of the territory or secede and organize a new 
order whose field should be co-extensvie with 
the continent. Deputies who were anxious for 
larger fields for their work corresponded with 
Mr. Root, and plans of different kinds for a new 
fraternity whose field should be national and 
international, were discussed with many. 

Mr. F. A. Falkenburg, who held second 
office in the Modern Woodmen, was especially 
interested, believing that he could swing a 
large contingent from the affected Colorado 
members into the new Order. Others with 
whom correspondence was procured to this end 
were Col. B. W. Jewell, Dr. W. O. Eogers, Mr. 
J. T. Yates, now Sovereign CJerk of the W. O. 
W., Prof. F. F. Eoose, a Past Sovereign Banker, 



Perfected Woodcraft 77 

W. M. Guiwitts, and Daniel SS. Maltby. 

So, overwhelmed with the feeling that the 
hour to strike was at hand, persuaded by his 
friends, and keenly pulsed by the throbbing 
anxiety to benefit mankind in the unlimited, 
unrestricted field of a new operation, Joseph 
Cullen Eoot issued the call to these intimate 
friends to meet him at Omaha, Neb., on June 
3, 1890, to set in motion plans for the inception 
of a new organization, destined to become the 
Woodmen of the World. 

It was an interesting scene, that of the 
gathering of that first group of men connected 
with the founding of Perfected Woodcraft. 
The men were as follows : J. C. Eoot, F. A. Falk- 
enburg, F. F. Boose, W. O. Eogers, W. M. Dor- 
ward, Eobert T. Court, John T. Yates, B. W. 
Jewell, and W. M. Guiwitts. Other dis- 
tinguished gentlemen sent their personal re- 
grets of their inability to be present. Hon. B. 
E. Sherman, ex-Governor of Nebraska, Gen- 
eral Theodore H. Thomas, L. J. Moss, S. L. 
Wade, Hon. Chas. K. Erwin, W. 0. Hommer- 
ville, and C. C. Farmer. And their names went 
down upon the record as the first disseminat- 
ors of the praise of the new Order, which this 
organizing convention had been called to found. 

The proceedings of this preliminary con- 
vention are exceedingly interesting. First, we 
find J. C. Eoot offering with F. F. Eoose the 
resolution that, "whereas it is our belief that 



78 Perfected Woodcraft 

the secret, fraternal, and social teachings of 
Woodcraft, as heretofore exemplified and 
practised, should be disseminated in every state 
and nation to encourage and benefit all men 
who may accept the same, and thus enable 
them to provide homes for their dependent 
ones," etc., "therefore, be it resolved, that in 
convention assembled in the city of Omaha, 
State of Nebraska, this third day of June, 1890, 
we do hereby establish the Sovereign Camp of 
the World, Modern Woodmen of America * * " 

A committee was appointed to draft a con- 
stitution and rules for the governing of the 
Camp, consisting of J. 0. Eoot and F. A. Falk- 
enburg. To the caller of the convention, with 
his enthusiastic friend, was thus assigned its 
most difficult task. The next day it was re- 
solved that the basis of the organization should 
be the Sovereign Camp, the Head Camps, Local 
Camps, Ladies' Camps, and other "deparments, 
branches and additions," the necessity for 
which might be determined in the future. It 
was the idea then that the Sovereign Camp 
was to be a "sort of central world around which 
were to revolve lesser luminaries." The system 
of Head Camps should number ten or more, 
each to be practically independent, but all to 
recognize a central or sovereign body as the 
"court of last resort," and having power to 



Perfected Woodcraft 79 

compel the subsidary branches to have uniform 
laws and features. 

The finances of the new Order should be 
simplified as much as possible, the idea being 
to have only one fund, with the understanding 
that a certain percentage of the same be set 
aside for expenses, and that the Head Camps 
be defined in the United States, and one or 
more in Great Britain's possessions. 

The first officers of the new-created Sove- 
reign Camp were elected as follows: Sovereign 
Consul, J. C. Eoot; Sovereign Adviser, L. J. 
Moss; Sovereign Clerk, B. W. Jewell; Sove- 
reign Banker, F. F. Boose; Sovereign Escort, 
W. C. Homerville; Sovereign Sentry, G. G. 
Stiles; Sovereign Managers, Hon. B. B. Sher- 
man, General Theodore H. Thomas, F. A. Falk- 
enburg, Hon. C. K. Erwin, Chas. C. Farmer; 
Sovereign Physician, W. O. Bogers. 

F. A. Falkenburg was commissioned to 
take charge of the Pacific Jurisdiction, which 
was to consist of eight states, as follows : Mon- 
tana, Wyoming, Utah, Idaho, Nevada, Wash- 
ington, Oregon and California. Colorado was 
to be admitted to this jurisdiction if the mem- 
bers of the camps of that state wished it. 
Those were the camps of the Modern Woodmen, 
mind you, which Sovereign Falkenburg per- 
suaded to come under the tents of the W. O. W. 
that they might form the nucleus of the new 
Order's strength in those commonwealths. Mr. 



80 Perfected Woodcraft 

Falkenburg was appointed to serve until the 
third Wednesday of June, 1894. Of the ser- 
vices of this noble man in this difficult field, 
I shall have more to say. 

The Sovereign Consul was assigned the 
task of writing the ritual for the new frater- 
nity. 

On the third day of the convention the new 
officers were installed, the constitution and 
laws were read, a committee appointed to pub- 
lish them and the meeting adjourned. 

And thus passed into history one of the 
most notable voluntary assemblages ever held 
in all the swing of time. Here were patriots, 
unauthorized by any power whatever save their 
own "inalienable right" to execute, to build, 
to conserve, with no source of authority save 
their dauntless courage and humanitarianism, 
undertaking a work remarkable not only for 
the methods of its beginning, but, as later 
events showed, for the phenomenal success 
which followed it. 

All honor to that little band of men! I 
wonder if even they realized the tremendous 
significance of the great work they were in- 
itiating. The Sovereign Consul and Founder, 
five years after, recalled some circumstances 
connected with the founding of the Order which 
will be of interest to Sovereigns everywhere. 
He said, "On the sixth day of June, 1890, a 
few thoughtful men gathered in the club-room 



Perfected Woodcraft 81 

of the Paxton Hotel in this city, for the pur- 
pose of discussing the feasibility of extending 
the philosophy of Woodcraft over the conti- 
nent and possibly into foreign lands. Some 
of them, coming hundreds of miles to partici- 
pate in this meeting, came filled with an in- 
spiration to do all within their power to ben- 
efit their fellow men. As a result of this con- 
ference there was promulgated the 'Perfected 
Order of Woodcraft/ which shortly afterwards 
was christened the Woodmen of the World/ 
With the characteristic energy, pluck and en- 
terprise of the citizens of Omaha, a few Wood 
men proceeded to organize the first camp, 
which was to be the nucleus about which 
should be gathered thousands of good men and 
true to constitute our grand Order, and 'Alpha* 
Camp was born. I was greeted by about one 
hundred and thirty-five gentlemen who had ex- 
pressed their willingness to identify themselves 
with the new enterprise. The camp was insti- 
tuted under the most auspicious circum- 
stances." 

As I said, I really wonder if the little 
group of founders knew the thousands and 
hundreds of thousands of hearts they were 
making themselves the means of cheering. Let 
the widows and children of deceased Sove- 
reigns in the lands where Woodcraft's ban- 
ners stream thank God for Joseph Cullen Eoot, 
and the brave, far-seeing, statesmanlike, phil- 



82 Perfected Woodcraft 

anthropic, humanity-loving group of men who 
gathered with him on those three days in 
Omaha! It must have been a beautiful day 
in that beautiful section of our country, that 
first saw the results of this meeting. The sun- 
beams that morning when those men met in 
that far city of the "golden West" must have 
been more cheerful and radiant than usual, 
and from the hearts of the world's laboring 
men everywhere must have ascended heaven- 
ward a feeling of overwhelming joy and thank- 
fulness, that in a misery-haunted and sorrow- 
filled and exacting old world at last had come 
a group of God-sent benefactors! The plow- 
man must have stopped in his furrow, smitten 
with the realization that the heretofore impos- 
sible protection to his family and home would 
now, at last, come. And on the hearthstones 
at nightfall in those early times now nearly 
a quarter of a century gone, must have kneeled 
thousands of the country's toiling peasantry, 
producers and factory laborers, in humble 
thankfulness to Almighty God for a deliverence 
which they were confident must come in an- 
swer to their piled-up former prayers before 
the Father's throne. 



CHAPTEE II. 

EARLY HISTORY AND RISE OF THE 

CRAFT 

The Sovereign Camp of the World, Modern 
Woodmen of America, which had been organ- 
ized in the preliminary convention of which I 
wrote in the chapter just closed, met again in 
a kind of second organization meeting in the 
New Savory House, Des Moines, la., August 
13, 1890, a little over two months after the or- 
ganizing convention had adjourned. The at- 
tendance comprised the officers elect and one 
visitor, Hon. Wm. C. Grohe, of Lyons, Iowa, 
a close friend of Mr. Root, who had been called 
in to give legal counsel as to the advisability of 
incorporating the Sovereign Camp. Mr. Grohe 
stated that unless the then existing Head 
Camp of the Modern Woodmen of America 
should become a party to the organization of 
the Sovereign Camp of the World, he would 
recommend that a change be made in the name 
of the new organization. He stated that the 
name they had taken, Sovereign Camp of the 
World, Modern Woodmen of America, might 
possibly at some future time furnish a pre- 
text for litigation between the two orders. 
The fact is, the new Order intended to be broad- 
er in its scope than the M. W. A., and really 
thought to accept the jurisdiction then known 
as the Head Camp, M. W. A., as one of its juris- 
dictions, to represent Woodcraft in the nine 



84 Perfected Woodcraft 

states included in said Head Camp jurisdic- 
tion. So, fearing that complications and dis- 
sentions might arise in the future, as to rights, 
authorities, provinces, etc., things well calcu- 
lated to thwart the teachings of brotherhood, 
benevolence, charity, and helpfulness which had 
been the basic tenets in the rituals and cere- 
monies of Woodcraft; and in order that the 
new-made Sovereign Camp might become an in- 
ternational order, the officers assembled decid- 
ed officially that the new Order should have 
the new name of the Woodmen of the World, 
that it should be an entirely separate organiza- 
tion, wholly independent of the M. W. A., with 
a Sovereign Camp, Head Camps, and Camps, 
as its constitution provided. A committee 
was appointed to draft articles of incorporation 
the new constitution was read and adopted, 
and the session adjourned. 

The Order was initiated; it was author- 
itative, and dignified. Its organization was 
now a matter of record, and it began to take 
on the significance of historic interest. Later 
years have shown, as future decades will con- 
inue to demonstrate, the wisdom of the de- 
cision which changed the name from that first 
intended, and gave it an unquestioned separate- 
ness and independence from an already suc- 
cessful and flourishing order. The incorpora- 
tion was under the laws of the state of Ne- 
braska, and the headquarters were placed at 



Perfected Woodcraft 85 

Omaha. These articles form the basis of the 
Order's legal existence. The first article pro- 
vided that the name of the corporation should 
be "Sovereign Camp, Woodmen of the World." 
The fifth article provided that the affairs 
should be conducted by an Excutive Council, 
composed of the Sovereign Commander, (Con- 
sul at that time) who should be ex-officio Pres- 
ident, and the Sovereign Adviser, Banker, 
Clerk, Escort, Watchman, Sentry, Physician, 
and five managers. The sixth provided for bi- 
ennial meetings of authorized delegates to a 
Sovereign Camp, the first to be held at Omaha 
in 1895, when officers should be elected to serve 
four years, except the Sovereign Commander, 
whose term should be fixed by the constitution. 

At a meeting of the officers called by the 
Sovereign Consul Commander at Omaha, Jan- 
uary 2, 1891, two things of importance were 
done: John T. Yates was elected to the Sove- 
reign Clerkship of the Camp, to fill the place 
of Col. JB. W. Jewell, whose ill health, result- 
ant of a railroad accident, forced his resigna- 
tion; and a permanent Board of Advisers was 
elected, to be known as the Executive Council, 
Sovereign Camp, W. O. W. 

Meantime the Sovereign Commander was 
doing an immense amount of preliminary and 
campaign work. Traveling much in the early 
months of the Order's existence, he was meet- 
ing and employing new and enthusiastic depu- 



86 Perfected Woodcraft 

ties to prosecute the work of getting members. 
The first deputy, it is interesting to learn, to 
dedicate his services officially to this noble un- 
dertaking was C. A. Wolfe, of Atchison, Kan. 
There had been some work done by others be- 
fore him, among them Sam G. Smythe, editor of 
the Sovereign Visitor, L. G. Blaine, Dr. H. M. 
Kennedy, and others; but Wolfe was the first 
official deputy. However, having organized a 
good many camps of Perfected Woodcraft in 
Kansas and Missouri, he went into other em- 
ployment. Then came Jonathan B. Frost, and 
asked the Sovereign Commander to assign him 
as his territory the imperial commonwealth of 
the "Lone Star." The first camp in the state 
of Texas was installed by him at Dallas. When 
he was ready to put on the initiatory work, 
he sent in to the little office established at 
Omaha as headquarters (of the setting up of 
which I shall presently relate), and asked 
that camp supplies be sent on. This early 
morning call was somewhat of an embarass- 
ment to those at the office, for they had no 
supplies and were short of funds. Having no 
resources save the personal cheques of the 
Sovereign Commander, they procured some 
cheap rubber stamps, account books, and sta- 
tionery, upon which latter Mr. Koot stamped 
the name of the new fraternity with the crude 
rubber stamps. A large amount of advertis- 
ing leaflets was placed in the shipment to 



Perfected Woodcraft 87 

Frost in order to make it look big and import- 
ant. 

The ritual had not been prepared at that 
time, and Frost had to paraphrase a Modern 
Woodmen ceremony of introduction, in the in- 
ition of his candidates and the installation of 
the Dallas Camp. Owing to the pressure of 
multifarious other duties the ritual of the W. 
O. W. was delayed, and no small embarrass- 
ment caused. It is humorously interesting to 
think now of the great men of the infant soci- 
ety, like Falkenburg and Frost, away off in 
the "wilderness" installing camps with old 
rituals. It must be called to mind in this con- 
nection that Mr. Boot's services to the Modern 
Woodmen as Head Consul had not expired at 
the calling of the Omaha convention in June 
1890, and it was not until the following Novem- 
ber that he was free to devote all his energies 
to the child fraternity. Falkenburg had gone 
ahead organizing the Head Camp, Pacific Jur- 
isdiction, and had taken in many members, call- 
ing them "Neighbors," the appelation given 
by the Modern Woodmen to its members, while 
the new ritual, when it did appear, gave them 
the name "Sovereign," by which the members 
of the W. O. W. are hailed today. Some of the 
very first Sovereigns to be introduced into the 
Order, therefore, were called "Neighbors;" but 
there has never been any fuss over it. 

Another of the pioneers — and I take space 



88 Perfected Woodcraft 

to give prominence to them because I feel that 
each of them deserves a lasting place among 
the energetic forces without which the early 
prosperity of the Order could not have been 
achieved — *were Sovereigns Nichols and Mosely 
in Missouri, Sovereign Eoediger in Oklahoma 
and Indian Territory, and Sovereign Dr. Wm. 
H. Smith in Michigan. 

Now Cor that first office and office force at 
the headquarters of Perfected Woodcraft. Mr. 
Iiooi was a I a loss to provide office and fixtures 
where the clerical work might be carried on, 
and while vwy little office force was needed 
io conduct ils business, yet he must have some- 
where to go and someone to keep "open house." 
In this dilemna, Mr. Sheely, the then owner 
of what was known as the Sheely Block in 
Omaha, but since purchased by the Woodmen 
of the World, situated at the corner of Fif- 
teenth and T Toward Streets, tendered three 
months' free rent of a large room at the north 
end of the second floor and it was very prompt- 
ly and thankfully accepted. This room was later 
on made even smaller by a partition. 

It will be recalled that at the resignation 
of R. W. Jewell as Sovereign Clerk, John 
T. Yates was appointed to fill his place. Mr. 
Yates, who has held his office continuously 
from that time to the present, did not come to 
Omaha to take active charge for several months 
for the reason that there was little business 



Perfected Woodcraft 89 

to be done by the Sovereign Clerk. He re- 
mained at his former employment, simply do- 
ing what signing was necessary. During this 
interim the bulk of what work there was to 
do was performed by H. J. Root, son of the 
founder, and his wife, Ruby Root. The Sove- 
reign Commander devoted most of his time 
to traveling in the interests of the Order, vis- 
iting towns, making addresses, personally or- 
ganizing camps, employing deputies, and boost- 
ing in every way possible. Thus he was plant- 
ing the seed corn from which the bounteous 
harvest has since sprung for Perfected Wood- 
craft. Practically all of the time he was busy 
with this end of Ihe work. His efforts were 
unceasing and unregardful of personal com- 
fort or advantage. Himself full of confidence 
and hope, he inspired courage wherever he 
went. Meeting in many places with opposi- 
tion the "most virulent and unscrupulous, he 
turned it into good account by giving fair 
treatment everywhere." 

It was a small office with a small office 
force, — one man and his wife, — that saw the 
transaction of the business of the Order during 
the first year of its history. And yet from it 
were written more than five thousand certifi- 
cates during that first eventful twelve month ! 
A letter from the Sovereign Commander to the 
Sovereigns, published in the June and July, 
1891, issues of the Visitor, reads: "Twelve 



90 Perfected Woodcraft 

months have passed away, and upon our first 
anniversary of the auspicious occasion of the 
birth of a great Order, we are indeed grateful 
for its accomplishment. Not even one of our 
faithful Sovereigns has fallen by the wayside, 
and the number has so multiplied and in- 
creased that its obligations can be easily hon- 
ored, and its power for good is recognized. 
Therefore, I do, by virtue of my office, hereby 
recommend to all Camps and Sovereigns of the 
W. O. W. in all its jurisdictions, to, on and 
after June 5. 1892, every year, observe the fifth 
day of June as a memorial of the dead and a 
celebration of the promulgation of Perfected 
International Woodcraft, for the blessing and 
benefit of mankind." 

The original camp of Perfected Woodcraft, 
organized at Omaha, Neb., was, and is, called 
Alpha Camp No. 1. The first officers of that 
camp were as follows : Consul Commander, 
Wm. Dorward ; Adviser, C. H. T. Eiepen ; Clerk, 
C. E. Allen; Banker, J. Neesy; Escort, W. E. 
Cady; Watchman, J. E. Wells; Sentry, N. M. 
Eobinson; Managers, McClintock, Henry, and 
Yates. A small group of Omaha Sovereigns, 
a with characteristic pluck," organized, imme- 
diately after the first convention had met in 
1890, the first Camp in its history. This Alpha 
Camp was to become a nucleus around which 
hundreds of Sovereigns in the city of Omaha 
should gather and form still other Camps. 



Perfected Woodcraft 91 

The first year of the Order's history sur- 
passed the greatest expectations. The first 
annual report of the Sovereign Commander, 
which featured the annual meeting of the Exe- 
cutive Council in January 1892 ? closed with the 
prophecy: "The past justifies the prediction 
that thousands will be brought to our stand- 
ards and be sharers with us of the benefits of 
Woodcraft. Future generations will look back 
upon the pioneers and promulgators of our 
Craft as benfactors, and our Order will re- 
ceive its baptism from weeping eyes, to which 
it will bring hope and courage." 

Well might the founder make such a hope- 
ful prophecy; for his report showed that the 
Order was already a veritable success. There 
was at that time a total of 6,085 members in 
good standing and loyal Woodmen lived in thir- 
teen states ! The keynote of the purpose of the 
new Order, Mr. Boot declared, was a "pro- 
nounced expression of hundreds of Craftsmen 
who were dissatisfied with restricting the 
principles of the Craft to narrow territorial 
limits, that the fundamental principles 
evolved by the originator of Woodcraft were 
broad enough to govern an order that could 
be extended over the entire continent." 

At this January, 1892, meeting of the Ex- 
ecutive Council, which lasted for four days, 
Head Consuls (provisional) were appointed for 
each of the states where Woodcraft then exist- 



92 Perfected Woodcraft 

ed, and for certain others. A committee was 
appointed to arrange a Ladies Auxiliary to 
the W. O. W. The per capita tax for the pay- 
ment of the Order's official expenses was levied 
at two dollars for the year 1892. 

There were several other meetings of this 
council before the first regular session of the 
Sovereign Camp in 1895. In fact, it met regu- 
larly each year. By January, 1893, the Sove- 
reign Commander was able to make the glow- 
ing report that the membership embraced the 
fine total of 10,299 men in good standing and 
carrying benefits to the amount of $20,576, 
which, when the monument items were in- 
cluded, was equivalent to an average of $1,- 
997.92 upon each risk which it carried. In 
the year just closed, the second of the frater- 
nity's existence, 7,024 certificates had been is- 
sued, and thirty-six had applied for an in- 
crease of insurance. And this, too, notwith- 
standing the fact that the year had been one 
of the "most fatal in the history of the past 
quarter of a century." The destruction of life 
by the epidemics of pneumonia and fevers 
which had swept the country at large had been 
something terrible. In the very face of the 
fact that several of the older beneficiary organ- 
izations had been forced to close their doors 
and retire from the fraternal field, the W. O. 
W. had saved its membership over nine hun- 
dred thousand dollars since its organization 



Perfected Woodcraft 93 

two and a half years before, which amount they 
would have been forced to pay had they car- 
ried the same amount of insurance in the reg- 
lar so-called old-line companies. 

"But," said Mr. Eoot, "the good work of 
Woodcraft cannot be estimated in any array of 
figures. It is educating its members to deeds 
of kindness and charity. It is making the 
world better thereby. It is protecting the 
good name of every member and every mem- 
ber's family. It is relieving distress, comfort- 
ing the weary, the sick, and troubled." 

The age limit under which only insurance 
would be furnished by the Order, having pre- 
viously been reduced from sixty to fifty-five 
years, was at this session of the Council re- 
duced still lower, to fifty-two years. Between 
the ages of sixteen and thirty-seven years the 
rates were to be reduced, and above thirty- 
seven gradually raised. The idea was to have 
the men in active, middle life, pay a substan- 
tial advance upon the old rates, which were 
found to be inadequate on account of the Or- 
der's mortality experience. 

Provision was made for the Sovereign 
Consul Commander to visit the Canadian au- 
thorities, "with full powers to arrange for the 
admission to the W. O. W. in that territory." 
In another chapter a detailed account of the 
founding of the Canadian branch of the Or- 
der is given. 



94 Perfected Woodcraft 

Another thing of great importance was the 
agreement between the Sovereign Camp and 
the Pacific Jurisdiction, of which Mr. Falken- 
burg was in control. It was determined that 
the Sovereign Camp should have no authority 
of any kind over the finances of the Pacific Jur- 
isdiction, except insofar as it might collect a 
per capita tax of five cents a year beginning 
January 1, 1893. The contract further pro- 
vided that the Sovereign Camp should be su- 
preme in all ritualistic matters, except that in 
the Pacific Jurisdiction members might be 
called "Neighbors" instead of "Sovereigns." 
Under these terms the Head Camp, Pacific 
Jurisdiction, acknowledged its loyalty and al- 
legiance to the Sovereign Camp. 

This compact was sealed when Sovereign 
Falkenburg, in a speech to the Council, said : 
"The doors of the Head and Local camps of the 
Pacific Jurisdiction stand open to the members 
of the Sovereign Jurisdiction. Perfect fealty 
and fraternity now exist between the two or- 
ganized jurisdictions, and the Pacific Jurisdic- 
tion recognized its allegiance to the Sovereign 
Camp." The alliance was sure, safe, and per- 
manent. Sovereign Falkenburg spoke the feel- 
ing of thousands of loyal followers of the 
standards of Woodcraft in thus giving utter- 
ance again to that old truth, "In union there 
is strength." 



Perfected Woodcraft 95 

Jewels were authorized for each Sovereign 
officer, as a badge of his office. 

An unerring sign of the progress the young 
fraternity was making at this early time was 
shown in the report of the Sovereign Clerk, 
who stated that the business of his office had in- 
creased during the year to such an extent as 
to necessitate his employment of three clerks 
and one stenographer. 

At this session of the Council it was 
provided that the Board of Managers should 
meet each year to audit and supervise the 
financial condition of the books of the Order, 
and the conduct of its business by the Sove- 
reign officers. 

It was at this meeting, too, that the com- 
mittee on the Ladies' Auxiliary made its favor- 
able report. The name recommended for the 
new^ adjunct was the Woodmen Circle. None 
could be members except choppers in good 
standing, and the wives and sisters and moth- 
ers of Woodmen. It should be under the pro- 
tection and control of the Sovereign officers, 
though with the proviso that the latter should 
not be held responsible for the payment of any 
of its obligations. More will be said of the 
origin and progress of the Circle in another 
place. 

The flag of Woodcraft was adopted as 
the red, white, and black. Just why the black 
was chosen I am unable to say. It seems that 



96 Perfected Woodcraft 

it should have been blue, in order that the or- 
ators of the fraternity might have the oppor- 
tunity, as occasion permitted, to ring the 
changes on the American flag when speaking 
of the principles and glory of the Craft. And, 
in fact, it would not have been an inappro- 
priate thing; for, hand in hand with love of 
home and fireside, the shibboleth of our glori- 
ous Order, there goes the patriotic love and 
loyalty to country, the larger home of citi- 
zens. And it would have been a fitting thing 
indeed for the flag of our nation to drape the 
Consul Commander's chair in every Forest, 
that its resplendent folds might grace the halls 
of Woodcraft throughout the land, fit em- 
blem of the debt the Sovereign owes to fire- 
side and to country. Being an international 
organization, I suppose it would not do to 
have the American flag as its ensign. How- 
ever, it is certainly true that thousands of 
Choppers throughout our own country labor 
under the impression that our colors are really 
the red, white, and blue; and this impression 
should be continuously corrected, both by the 
Sovereign Visitor and by the officialty of every 
local camp. For a full year after I became a 
Sovereign, I had the false impression myself, 
and in fact the Forest at whose stump I took 
my obligations was decorated in the flaming 
coloring of the American banner. 

But we turn the pages of the record of time 




W. A. Fraser 



Perfected Woodcraft 97 

and another year of the doings of the Order 
is history. The next annual meeting of the 
Executive Council was held in January, 1894. 
Very interesting is the report of Sovereign 
Falkenburg, who stated among other things 
that in his jurisdiction the membership had in- 
creased more than two thousand in the hundred 
days just preceding the Council's sitting. The 
year 1893 had been one of financial panic and 
disaster. Money* was withdrawn into the fam- 
ily pots and satchels, and the public confi- 
dence in all money handling organizations was 
generally and fiercely shaken. And yet it 
could be said : "The spirit of genuine frater- 
nity prevails. The needy are visited, the sick 
are cared for, and the Order socially is ac- 
quiring a splendid reputation throughout the 
Jurisdiction. The Jurisdiction (Pacific) is 
harmonious in every respect. The camps are 
growing rapidly under the loyal efforts of the 
general membership." 

What adds more to the interest of these 
quoted utterances of Sovereign Falkenburg is 
the critical condition under which that terri- 
tory called the Pacific Jurisdiction, formerly 
the stronghold of the Modern Woodmen, came 
to be filled with Choppers as loyal to the Sove- 
reign Camp as any in the world. The success- 
ful management of the Pacific territory in 
those early days required the leadership, tact 
and diplomacy of a statesman of the truest 



98 Perfected Woodcraft 

type. And Sovereign Falkenburg was prov- 
ing himself eminently competent to handle 
the proposition. All honor to Falkenburg, the 
right hand man of Joseph Cullen Root! When 
Stonewall Jackson had "passed over the river" 
General Robert E. Lee, in charge of the entire 
military force of the Southern Confederacy, 
wrote to Jackson's widow, that the General 
had had the misfortune to lose his left arm, 
and concluded, "And I, madam, have lost my 
right!" What a glowing tribute, and how 
very fitting when applied to Falkenburg, the 
chief assistant of our noble Founder! 

A very significant fact lies in the pathetic 
death of Willie Warner, of Union Camp No. 1, 
Mies, Michigan. This boy was the first Sove- 
reign of Perfected Woodcraft to cross over in- 
to the Great Beyond. At the time of his 
death he was over nineteen years of age, and 
he had never left his parental home without 
kissing his mother good-by. One afternoon, 
in the summer of 1891, while bathing at 
Brown's Eddy in the St. John's River near 
Mies, he ventured out into deep water at the 
eager solicitation of friends. He could not 
swim, and was drowned before the boys could 
reach him. He left a certificate for $2,500 
payable to his step-mother, Naomi Warner. 

Curious fact : not long after this the father 
of Willie Warner died, leaving another policy 
payable to Naomi Warner, who thus became 



Perfected Woodcraft 99 

the first recipient, to the amount of $5,000 al- 
together, of the bounties of the W. O. W. 

An assessment was called in September, 
1891, to meet the payment of the first death 
loss, and this produced about $3,000, an 
amount sufficient to meet the $2,600 of indebt- 
edness incurred by the death of Willie Warner, 
with a small balance for contingencies. 

Deaths followed with frequency, and as- 
sessments after that were made ranging al- 
most one for every month. Never a claim was 
repudiated, and the payment of these early 
calls gave new confidence and strength to the 
infant society. 

Perhaps the most striking fact about the 
death of Willie Warner was in the matter of 
his initials, W. W. What a co-incidence! 
They are the initials, too, of our Order's name. 
And yet how appropriate the words are, be- 
cause they stand for the perpetuation of the 
memory of deceased Sovereigns; and the $2,600 
paid to this boy's mother and for the erection 
of a monument at his grave was the first mater- 
ial instance of the fulfillment of the promise 
of the new Order to assist, to protect, to per- 
petuate! Befitting initials, these of the first 
deceased Sovereign, typical of the everlasting 
glory of Perfected Woodcraft ! 



CHAPTEE III. 

THE CANADIAN JUEISDICTION AND 

THE FIEST SOVEEEIGN CAMP 

As related in the previous chapters, the 
idea of the founder of a new Woodmen society 
was to extend territorially the limits of the 
parent organization. During the year 1891, 
Sovereign James Eamplin had asked for Can- 
ada as his field of deputyship, and this terri- 
tory was accordingly granted him. With his 
son, Wm. A. Eamplin, he proceeded to his 
work in April of that year. Canada was the 
land of their birth, and they were anxious to 
build up the Order in their home country. 
They had been assured by prominent barristers 
in Canada that no existing Canadian law 
could possibly act as a bar to the promulgation 
of the fraternity's teachings in the Province 
of Ontario. 

These men worked faithfully and success- 
fully until twenty-one camps had been organ- 
ized. The first man in that country whom they 
interested in Woodcraft was Edward Jarmain. 
Eamplin got the leading citizens of London, 
the capital city of Ontario, for charter mem- 
bers of his first camp. This camp met in the 
Ontario Loan Building at the corner of Market 
Lane and Dun das Streets ,and became known 
as Forest Camp No. 1. 



Perfected Woodcraft 101 

Two years after this notable incident, the 
Canadian Insurance Inspector noted the fact 
that American fraternal insurance societies 
were obtaining prestige because of the non-en- 
forcement of a law of the realm which had 
long since been deemed a dead letter. The In- 
spector accordingly offered to Parliament an 
amendment to this law, intended to banish for- 
ever from the Dominion of Canada all organiz- 
ations which had not official recognition prior 
to March, 1891. 

Having been advised at the outset that the 
old law had not been operating to exclude or- 
ganizations of this kind, Mr. Eoot and his com- 
peers had proceeded to spread the doctrines 
of Woodcraft in seemingly prohibited grounds. 
The adoption of the Inspector's amendment 
w r ould be a death blow to Woodcraft in Cana- 
da unless something could be done; and the 
Sovereign Commander hastened to the rescue. 
With a committee of Canadian Woodmen he 
visited the Inspector, Hunter, and Oronhyatek- 
ha, an Indian and chairman of the Parliament- 
ary committee of Canadian Orders. The Par- 
liament passed the amendment, and it looked 
for a certainty that the Order was dead in 
Canada. 

But Sovereigns Fitzgerald and Luscombe 
and Fuller continued their efforts, and the fol- 
lowing winter Sovereign Commander Eoot 
again visited Ottawa, the seat of Parliament. 



102 Perfected Woodcraft 

After nearly two months of ceaseless effort, 
they persuaded the Parliament to pass a bill 
giving the W. O. W. a special Dominion char- 
ter as a Canadian order, and to be called the 
Canadian Order, Woodmen of the World. 

Under this charter, obtained after so 
much energy and the tireless effort of those so 
deeply interested in its perpetuity there, the 
Canadian Head Camp was organized at Lon- 
don, Ontario, April 16, 1893. All the camps 
represented were given full vote. The Sove- 
reign Commander submitted a form of by-laws, 
w T hich was adopted. The age limits of mem- 
bership were fixed at sixteen and fifty-five 
years, and the per capita tax at two dollars 
per annum. The rituals and secret work of 
the Sovereign Jurisdiction were adopted, and 
the following first officers were chosen: Sove- 
reign Past Head Consul Commander, and per- 
petual honorary member, J. C. Eoot; Head 
Consul Commander, Wm. Fuller; H. Adviser, 
C. C. Hodges; H. Ranker, T. H. Luscombe; H. 
Clerk, W. C. Fitzgerald; H. Physician, W. H. 
Harrison; H. Escort, K. H. Blackman; H. 
Watchman, C. F. Feidt; H. Sentry, H. J. 
Crocker. The Head Camp adopted a resolu- 
tion to indemnify the Sovereign Commander for 
all expenditures made by him in procuring its 
charter and bringing it into being. 

It was under these conditions, then, that 
the Head Camp, Canadian Order, W. O. W., 



Perfected Woodcraft 103 

came into legal, authorized and permanent ex- 
istence, and it is of great significance thai the 
Dominion charter granted by the special act 
of Parliament is the only charter ever granted 
to a fraternal order in that country under its 
fraternal laws. "This," said Mr. Root, "is the 
most positive endorsement our Order has had." 

We shall, as we proceed, observe the re- 
markable growth of Woodcraft in that great 
stretch of country at the North. Even in Feb- 
ruary, 1895, there were 1231 members in good 
standing, and the Order was carrying an aver- 
age per capita risk of $1,638.91. 

Mr. Koot was able to announce at the close 
of the first year of history in that Jurisdiction: 
"The utmost degree of good fellowship prevails, 
and there is undoubted loyalty to the Sove- 
reign Camp manifested in all the transactions 
and doings of that branch of the Order. This 
information, when published in the columns of 
the Sovereign Visitor, brought delight to four- 
teen thousand Sovereigns in America. Well 
might the membership feel proud, for the prin- 
ciples of Woodcraft "are broad enough," said 
the Founder, "and its foundations are laid so 
deeply, that we can build a substantial and en- 
during structure, which may become a wonder 
for ages to come, and afford solace to hun- 
dreds of thousands of bereft widows and fath- 
erless children." His words ring true today. 
Less than a quarter of a century has witnessed 



104 Perfected Woodcraft 

a wonderful growth, by which that "substan- 
tial structure" really has already become a 
"wonder," and will remain so "for ages to 
come." 

The fourth and last session of the Ex- 
ecutive Council before the first stated session 
of the Sovereign Camp met March 6-12, 1895. 
Reports were made as usual, and in the pro- 
ceedings of this session we note few things out 
of the ordinary routine of business. But Sove- 
regin Falkenburg, as he had bef ore, brought 
upon himself the unstinted praise of the body 
when he arose and told of the wonderful prog- 
ress of the year in his jurisdiction: "It now 
contains a membership of ten thousand. We 
are receiving more than five hundred original 
applications every month. The jurisdiction 
does not owe a bill in the world. We have in 
good standing about one third of the entire 
membership of the W. O. W. in the United 
States." Sovereign Falkenburg had done this 
piece of work in a section of our country wide- 
ly scattered, covering much space and thinly 
populated. He and his co-workers had per- 
formed the feat in thin years, too; for epi- 
demics had swept the country, and silver, the 
chief industry of part of the section, had suf- 
fered a terrible shock. Despite these facts, 
and in the very face of them, the march of 
Woodcraft had continued in unprecedented 
measures. A vote of thanks and congratula- 



Perfected Woodcraft 105 

tions was tendered to Sovereign Falkenburg 
and the Pacific Jurisdiction. 

It must have been a treat indeed to be 
. present as the hammer fell that called to order 
the first stated session of the Sovereign Camp, 
Woodmen of the World, at Omaha, March 12, 
1895, and to see Father Boot arise from his 
chair ard tell the Sovereigns assembled of the 
wonderful progress the infant Order had made 
during its first five years of history. I im- 
agine it was a scene where strong men wept for 
joy. Sovereign Commander Eoot hardly sur- 
passed in the intensity of his earnestness and 
and solicitation for the welfare of the frater- 
nity the body of men who had worked with 
him for its upbuilding. His exegesis of re- 
sults showed a record of progress which had 
never been equalled in an equivalent period of 
time and in the early, formative period of its 
existence, by any beneficiary organiza- 
tion in the fraternal history of the world. He 
reported the startling membership of 20,- 
272! Despite the epidemics of the past, and 
notwithstanding the financial depression, po- 
litical excitement, and the hundred and one 
different kinds of dissentions and disturbances 
which in the infancy of the Order shook the 
country with an alarming "unrest and dis- 
trust," Perfected Woodcraft had spread 
throughout the length and breadth of our land, 
and in strides unheard of and unparalleled in 



106 Perfected Woodcraft 

the world's history of similar institutions. 

Near the close of the session there occurred 
a love feast in the camp. It came about by 
the recounting of successful though difficult 
labors on the Western Slope, and the recipro- 
cal bestowal of honor and glory upon each 
other, by Father Eoot and Sovereign Falken- 
burg. When the latter rose to his feet to tell 
in detail of the sruggle on the Pacific, the 
business-like attention of the Sovereigns took 
an a significance of deeper interest. He told 
of the opposition which had beset him in his 
task of carrying out the paper contract or com- 
mission which had been taken from the Sove- 
reign Camp by himself at the beginning. He 
had requested sixteen hundred members in 
the camps of the Modern Woodmen of America 
in those nine states to withdraw from that 
order and become the nucleus for the new fra- 
ternity. They had complied ,relinquishing 
their membership in the M. W. A. "Glory," 
said Falkenburg, "should not be given me, but 
those who stood by me in that long and hard 
fought battle — such men as Willard, Kennedy, 
Evans, Browning, Nash, and others." 

The Pacific Jurisdiction was a success in 
every way, numerically, financially and other- 
wise. Here was a man, and a man's work! 
"Blessed is the man," says Caiiyle, "who has 
found his work." And if F. A. Falkenburg had 
never succeeded in any other avenue of life — 



Perfected Woodcraft 107 

and he was a success iu everything he under- 
took to do — if he had never performed a single 
noble piece of labor other than this, he would 
still deserve the thankful praise and unstinted 
devotion of every patriotic Woodman who ever 
walked within a Forest, and the millions of 
Sovereigns yet to be, throughout the world! 
"I believe that future generations will bless 
his name," said Father Eoot. 

These two men, Eoot and Falkenburg, in- 
itiated a work in those early years which will, 
I am entirely confident, bring infinitely more 
comfort and reward in the countless epochs of 
eternity, than all the emoluments, riches, glory 
and prestige that come from sitting on a throne 
and receiving the forced plaudits of the world. 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE WONDERFUL PROGRESS OF THE 

CRAFT TO DATE 

On March 6, 1897, a small group of "as 
capable and patriotic fraternalists as ever as- 
sembled to legislate for any fraternal order in 
the United States" met in Sovereign Camp 
Convention at St. Louis, Mo. The Sovereign 
officialty and twenty-one delegates comprised 
the body, and this was really the first repre- 
sentative body that met as the general organ 
of the Craft. 

The reports showed a magnificent prog- 
ress along every line and in every phase of 
the work. At the first of the previous Decem- 
ber (1896) there were in good standing 33,027 
members in the Sovereign Jurisdiction alone. 
In that year there had been paid out, for the 
268 deaths, $581,900. There was now revenue 
sufficient to meet all expenses and to liquid- 
ate as well the indebtedness incurred in the 
years of the struggling infancy, when it had 
been necessary to draw upon the future in 
order to place the Order before the world in 
the proper light and establish it in all parts 
of the country at the same time. The period 
of 1895-7 had been hazarded by the worst kind 
of political and financial disturbances. Not in 
a quarter of a century had there been so many 
lapses in insurance companies, and the prog- 



Perfected Woodcraft 109 

ress of the W. O. W. was therefore so much 
the more remarkable. 

The St. Louis Convention held an eleven 
days' session. Much of importance was accom- 
plished. An emergency fund was created. 
The insignia of the Uniform Bank was adopted. 

The next year, too, was one of great un- 
certainty and dire forebodings. The Spanish- 
American war imperiled the safety of thous- 
ands of Sovereigns who patriotically volun- 
teered for their country's service. A double as- 
sessment was called for for July of that year 
on account of a probable unusual mortality 
from the War. And the Sovereign Visitor 
came out strongly in its plea for patriotism in 
the payment of these calls: "We must remem- 
ber that hundreds of our Sovereigns are in 
Uncle Sam's service, who have shown their 
patriotism by going to fight the foul oppres- 
sor, Spain, and defending Old Glory while we 
stayed at home. Surely if our boys are so 
brave as to give up their lives to fight the bat- 
tles of our country, we can be true to our ob- 
ligations. We are paving the way to possi- 
bilities that may arise, so that if our boys are 
pierced by Spanish bullets, let it be said that 
the Woodmen of the World are indeed loyal 
and patriotic, and will pay if it takes two, 
three, or four assessments. Stand firm and 
true; show your colors; flinch not; pay up." 

Despite the uncertainties resultant from 



110 Perfected Woodcraft 

^he war and other scares Ojij Order continued 
to flourish during the biennial period from 
1897 to 1899. In April of the latter year the 
Sovereign Camp assembled at Memphis, Tenn., 
with headquarters at the Gayoso Htoel, scene 
of so many other historic and interesting con- 
ventions. At this gathering of the delegates of 
Perfected Woodcraft it was decided that any 
state having as many as ten thousand mem- 
bers might organize itself into a Head Camp. 
This was a wise law, for it reduced materially 
the number of miles many delegates had to 
travel in going to other states to Head Camp 
Conventions, and the increased expenses at- 
tendant upon these journeys. Adjustment of 
the rates in minor details, the matter of the 
emergency fund, the beneficiary fund, old age 
disability and other features were discussed 
and given over into the hands of the Execu- 
tive Council, which was at this time composed 
of as brave and brainy men as ever made up 
a round-table or a cabinet. 

It was also provided at this session that 
each Sovereign, after reaching the age of sev- 
enty years, should thereafter each year re- 
ceive one-tenth of the amount of his policy, 
and at death the unpaid balance, should there 
be such, should go to his beneficiary. This law 
sprang into great favor everywhere. 

The Sovereign Commander was elected to 
a second term of eight years. 



Perfected Woodcraft 111 

"The great success of our past/' said Mr. 
Root, "is tireless activity at headquarters and 
in the field, liberal advertising, fair compensa- 
tion to officers and employees, and original 
methods of interesting the people." 

In the fall of 1900, the Sovereign Com- 
mander established the Organization and 
Premium Departments of the Order — features 
made necessary by the amazing increase in 
numbers and the need of greater efficiency in 
organization and management. This is a de- 
partment for the deputy. The great demand 
for efficient field men, for capable men to work 
in the vineyard of the masses, and the enor- 
mous proportions to which the numerical 
strength of the Order had grown, necessitated 
the placing of a competent general at the head 
of this phase or department of the work, and 
George F. Wooley has held for several years 
this most important post. Under his direction 
State Managers are placed in the different jur- 
isdictions, and field men in an area limited 
from only a few square miles to groups of coun- 
ties. 

The perpetuity of the Order is a certainty 
only through the heroism and perseverance 
of the field men. They are the fighting guards 
upon the frontier of Woodcraft's domain, and 
upon them in very truth rests the future of the 
Craft. Had it not been for a deputy, you and 
I would likely as not be today without the fold, 



112 Perfected Woodcraft 

and there would be few camps in a small and 
impotent fraternity. The deputies are the van- 
guards of our progress, the heralds of the 
Craft's success. 

To show the enormity of the organization 
phase of the work, it is necessary only to state 
that the total gross expense of operation, in- 
cluding compensation and expense of State, 
District, and Local Organizers, for the two year 
period ending December 31 1912, reached the 
monster sum of $1,067,655.25 ! 

The offering of premiums to clerks and 
camps and individual Sovereigns not actively 
in the field, for the finding and procuring of 
new material for the Order, is an influential 
means, also, of increasing the membership and 
at the same time of creating a new zeal in the 
Craft. Camps are offered special prizes for 
large class introductions. It has been estimat- 
ed in the past the average cost to the Sove- 
reign Camp of applications secured by the giv- 
ing of premiums was only fifty- five cents! It 
pays abundantly. 

The Sovereign Camp which met at Colum- 
bus, Ohio, in May, 1901, was fraught with con- 
sequential and significant legislation. Changes 
were made in the rates of the older members — 
an entirely new thing. The rates for new mem- 
bers coming in being raised, the older ones now 
must pay upon the same basis. A radical 
change, it has nevertheless been carried out 



Perfected Woodcraft 113 

with but small loss in numbers to the Order, 
Very few of the "old stand-by's" forsook the 
fraternity whose "old guard" they had been in 
the early years of its formative period ; and 
this is evidence conclusive of their faith in Hs 
stability. Doubting Thomases of today, who 
are inclined to pick a quarrel about every im- 
aginary flaw, should take lessons from the ex- 
ample by these early patriots. 

The payment of the benefits for old age y 
and the amassing of a separate fund for emer- 
gencies, enacted into law at the previous Sove- 
reign Camp, met with well nigh universal 
approval, and the plan was continued as to 
both. No change was made in the emergency 
fund or the accumulated certifcate policy, and 
the practice is followed today. Stringent pro- 
vision was made for the expulsion of saloon- 
keepers and liquor dealers engaging in busi- 
ness and obtaining membership in the W. O. 
W. through false representation. 

Quite an interesting issue of the Sovereign 
Visitor was that of May, 1902, which was 
turned over to boosting Anniversary Day, 
which would fall on June 6. The Order would 
be twelve years old. This issue was featured 
by a front-page cut and large type slogans and 
shibboleths. Such sentences as these, in heavy- 
faced type through its pages, attracted the at- 
tention of the Sovereigns: "I guess you know 
how to carry an axe;" "The W. O. W. goat is 



114 Perfected Woodcraft 

not so fierce. Jump on and try;" "Remember, 
the main thing is 200,000 Woodmen ;" and "We 
are coming Father Root, 200,000 strong." The 
June number of the paper was featured with 
more cuts and accounts of W. O. W. celebra- 
tions in scores of different languages. It was 
quite a "literary" sheet. 

It is hardly necessary to detail the pro- 
ceedings of each meeting either of Sovereign 
Camp or Executive Council to date. Briefly, 
the Camp of 1903 met at Milwaukee, Wis. ; that 
of 1905 at Chatanooga, Tenn.; of 1907, at 
Norfolk, Va,; of 1909. at Detroit, Mich; of 
1911, at Rochester, N. Y. ; and of 1913, at Jack- 
sonville, Fla. It was the Detroit Convention 
that authorized the erection of the new W. O. 
W. building at Omaha, a full and authentic 
description of which appears on other pages 
of this work. 

Woodcraft, and indeed the entire frater- 
nal world, was shocked as the news flashed 
over the continent that Falkenburg was dead. 
This was on February 14, 1905. The man who 
had accomplished so vast a work in the Pacific 
Jurisdiction, the "right hand man of Root," 
the peerless fraternal advocate of the West, 
fell a victim to Bright's Disease at Los Angeles. 
At the time of his death he was President of 
the National Fraternal Congress. His loss was 
mourned in thousands of American homes into 
which his name had gone as a pioneer of the 



Perfected Woodcraft 115 

great fraternity to whose leadership he had giv- 
en the best years of his noble life. 

The sixteenth anniversary number of the 
Visitor, which appeared in June, 1906, is full 
of data that furnishes food for pride. On this 
frontispiece appeares a complete statement of 
the growth of the Order, and its material is so 
good that I cannot refrain from using it here, 
in part: 

In 1891, the end of the first year of the 
Order's eventful history, there were 5,449 mem- 
bers, with paid insurance amounting to $10,- 
000 : By 1896, the number had reached 50,100 
with $500,759 of insurance. The next year 
showed the remarkable increase of over seven- 
teen thousand members, and by 1906 the enroll- 
ment had reached 420,608; the paid up insur- 
ance totalled the enormous sum of $28,000,- 
000; an emergency fund, but recently created, 
had grown to $5,000,000, and twelve thousand 
monuments had been erected at the graves of 
fallen Sovereigns. Taking into consideration 
all the branches and departments of Perfected 
Woodcraft, the figures are still more astonish- 
ing. In all branches fifteen thousand Camps 
and Groves (the local lodge of the Woodmen 
Circle) had erected twenty-five thousand mem- 
orial shafts, and had paid to their beneficiaries 
$14,000,000 in cash to pay death losses and 
monuments. 

Some interesting estimates relative to the 



116 Perfected Woodcraft 

hugeness of the amount paid out since the 
inception of the Order are given in the Vis- 
itor, issue of January, 1910. In silver dollars, 
the article said, the amount would weigh 1,381 
tons, and would fill forty-six cars of 60,000 
capacity. If placed in single file in $1.00 bills, 
it would reach over 3,478 miles, or further 
than from Maine to California or, if piled one 
upon the other, would make a stack over two 
miles high. The reserve fund was so large that 
it would cover the proposed new W. O. W. 
building with five dollar bills from the side- 
walk to the roof and cover the roof with twenty 
dollar bills, and then have $842,960 left. Any 
person trying to spend this amount at the rate 
of one dollar each minute would be kept con- 
stantly at it for thirty-four years and three 
months. 

The later figures of the Order's unparal- 
leled progress are still more wonderful: 

The total death claims paid to De- 
cember, 1912, amount to $48,842,589.30. 
As many as 32,462 monuments were erected. 
The membership of the Woodmen of the World, 
as this is written, is somewhere between seven- 
hundred and fifty and eight hundred thous- 
and; the reserve fund, a bulwark of safely in- 
vested and impregnable strength, is perhaps 
more than eighteen millions. There has been 
no raising of the rates of the Order since 1901. 
It has already become the standard by which 



Perfected Woodcraft 117 

all the other fraternal benefit societies of the 
world are measured. 

The average cost of life insurance in the 
sixteen leading old line companies of the Unit- 
ed States from 1888 to 1907 was f 10.31 on the 
thousand dollars. The W. O. W. operates its 
vast plant and pays all the expenses of the pres- 
ent enormous office force at the astoundingly 
low average cost of fifty cents per member! 
With a representative form of government, and 
without high salaried officials, it is able to 
hold the record for the cost of operation of the 
world's leading insurance societies. The Sove- 
reigns of Woodcraft get better service from 
their officialty for the money they pay them 
than the policy holders of any insurance com- 
pany on the face of the earth ! And in addition 
to this, the W. O. W. pays, in the monument 
fund, exactly flOO more than any other in- 
surance company at the death of the policy 
holder. The average mortality in its ranks 
is not noticeably increasing, and the ac- 
cession of new material who are contributing 
their quota of the comparatively low expenses 
of management, seems absolutely to insure the 
Order's permanency. 

The Pacific Jurisdiction, still progressing 
at a rapid rate in membership, has at present 
almost 115,000 members, and the Canadian 
Jurisdiction about 22,000. 

Woodcraft's principles are as broad as the 



118 Perfected Woodcraft 

earth, and as comprehensive as the race. Ad- 
dressing itself to the dominant Anglo-Saxon 
race of people, it is intended to ennoble the cit- 
izenship which comes beneath its banner; to 
minister to the sick; to assist the afflicted; to 
furnish employment to those who, unaided, are 
not able to find work; to throw a sheltering 
wing about the unprotected living; to honor- 
ably bury its dead; to place a fitting physical 
memorial at the grave of its deceased; and 
withal to make a more intelligent and human 
citizenship. It is primarily for the preserva- 
tion of the wholesome and healthy and prosper- 
ous family. Its bulwark is the fireside, and 
its slogan, home. With no appeal to creed or 
dogma, with a purely democratic organization 
and control, it appeals to the higher manhood 
of the average citizen. For mutual benefit in 
the hour of misfortune, it shuts its doors to the 
saloon, and the idle, thriftless man who is too 
lazy to battle for the necessities of life is barred. 
More, it furnishes social entertainment to 
thousands of families, thus welding into a 
closer brotherhood the membership of commun- 
ities, and developing a neighborliness and 
wholesome comaradery of men and women. 
It stands for fraternal benefits upon the plat- 
form of a common brotherhood and for busi- 
ness benefits upon the solid foundation of safe 
financial and business principles. Thus the 
social, fraternal and business aspects of the in- 



Perfected Woodcraft 119 

dividual and community life are emphasized 
in a happy and fortunate combination. 

Finally, the Order is building not for a 
year or a decade, but for all time to come. We 
have seen how in twenty-four years of appall- 
ingly eventful history it has sprung from a 
small group of six mien in doubt as to the fu- 
ture to a combined membership in all 
branches of practically a million people, thus 
numbering, excluding the Canadian Jurisdic 
tion, which is the smallest, nearly one out of 
every hundred people in the United States. 
From a treasury taxed to pay the small expense 
of maintenance, it has become in less than a 
quarter of a century the richest order in the 
land. 

Wonderful progress ! Success unparalleled ! 



CHAPTER V. 
CO-ORDINATE BRANCHES OF PERFECT- 
ED WOODCRAFT 

The "Mystic Circle/' and the "Woodman 
Circle?' 
Shortly after the organization of the 
Woodmen of the World in 1890, it was felt 
that there should be a Ladies' Auxiliary, and 
the idea was propably first urged by Mrs. F. 
A. Falkenburg and Mrs. F. F. Roose, the wives 
of the two men prominent in the initiation of 
the W. O. W. The husbands of these two noble 
ladies undertook to promote such an organiza- 
tion as early as 1891. The organization was 
accordingly effected and a ritual composed. It 
became known as the "Mystic Circle/' and the 
local lodges were called "Groves." The first 
Grove was organized at Denver, Colo. At the 
head of the Auxiliary was to be the Supreme 
Forest. Having tried to establish the Circle 
firmly on the Pacific coast, or rather in the 
Pacific Jurisdiction, it was found that the 
Woodmen of the World officially was unsym- 
pathetic. The "Mystic Circle" was consequent- 
ly a failure in the West. But the Sovereign 
Executive Council of the W. O. W. came to the 
rescue in 1892, and appointed a committee on 
the Ladies' Auxiliary, which reported favor- 
ably. This is how the "Mystic Circle" was res- 
urrected and renamed the "Woodmen Circle." 



Perfected Woodcraft 121 

The committee having reported favorably, rec- 
ognition of the Auxiliary was ordered, and 
provision was made for a constitution and rit- 
ual, and for incorporation as soon as practic- 
able. 

It is interesting to note that the Woodmen 
Circle's first rituals were those of the old "Mys- 
tic Circle," just as the first rituals of the W. 
O. W., used by its eager and zealous first ad- 
vocates, were those of the Modern Woodmen. 

It was Sovereign Clerk Yates and Sove- 
reign Commander Boot, who took fatherly 
charge of the infant "Circle" and brought it 
to the attention of Woodmen camps. In a 
few months two thousand members had been 
brought within its ranks. A constitution was 
drafted by Messrs. Eoot, Farmer and Eoose, 
and the Woodmen Circle was incorporated 
September 5, 1895. The first stated session of 
the Sovereign Camp in that same year ap- 
proved the action of the Executive Council 
in recognizing the new Auxiliary, its activities 
began to take on authority, and the work of en- 
rolling members was pushed with a new zeal. 

And yet the young organization would 
probably have perished, as the "Mystic Circle" 
had done before it, had not the Sovereign of- 
ficers fostered it in the belief that it was an 
indispensible adjunct to the Craft. The first 
officers of the Woodmen Circle, appointed by 
the Sovereign Camp's committee, which also 



122 Perfected Woodcraft 

drafted its constitution and laws, were as fol- 
lows: Supreme Guardian, Mrs. Mary Huse; 
Supreme Clerk, Mrs. Kuby Root; Supreme 
Banker, C. C. Farmer. 

The Supreme Forest met in conjunction 
with the Sovereign Camp at Memphis in 1899, 
when officers were elected, and the present Su- 
preme Guardian, Mrs. Emma B. Manchester, 
was chosen to lead the new Circle into great- 
er fields of successful achievement. 

The plan of the Woodmen Circle is similar 
to that of the W. O. W. By a small monthly 
payment of assessment and dues one may be as- 
sured of prompt payment, at death, of the 
amount of his policy (ranging from one to 
two thousand dollars) to his beneficiary, while 
if the certificate amounts to five hundred dol- 
lars or more, a monument, to cost one hundred 
dollars, is placed at the deceased's grave. It 
has the accumulated certificate plan, paying in 
full each certificate after three year's member- 
ship in the Order. If death occurs before that 
time, the amount payed is proportionately re- 
duced. The Circle is the effective answer to 
the question, Why should not the mother, wife, 
and sister assist the father, husband, brother 
in providing for loved ones, as well as them- 
selves enjoy the pleasures of social and busi- 
ness f raternalism ? 

The Circle has grown by leaps and bounds 
since 1897. The membership on January 1, 



Perfected Woodcraft 123 

1913, was 115,378, and its insurance in full 
force was f 109,816,000. There are now almost 
thirty-five hundred Groves, and an emergency 
fund of 12,638,966.99. Since its organization 
it has paid death claims to the amount of 
13,273,858.78. It is now one of the most popu- 
uar orders managed chiefly by women in the 
world. 

The Auxiliary has its headquarters in the 
W. O. W. building at Omaha. 

Mrs. Manchester, the head of this branch 
of Woodcraft, is the "most notable woman in 
the fraternal world." Devoting all her time 
to its success, she has by unflagging zeal and 
tireless energy built a structure that will in 
generations to come be her greatest monu- 
ment. 

Women of Woodcraft 

Another co-ordinate branch of Perfected 
Woodcraft, confined territorially to the Paci- 
fic Jurisdiction, and which began business on 
April 1, 1897, is known as the Women of Wood- 
craft. Articles of incorporation were filed on 
March 26, with the Secretary of State of Col- 
orado. Leadville, Colo., was made the head- 
quarters. The Pacific Jurisdiction officially 
recognized it as an Auxiliary and, it thus took 
its place not as a competing auxiliary, but 
serving the same purpose in that Jurisdiction 
as does the Woodmen Circle in the Sovereign 
Jurisdiction. Mrs. Carrie C. Van Orsdall was 



124 



Perfected Woodcraft 



chosen Grand Gaurdian, and still serves in that 
capacity. Under her direction the Women of 
Woodcraft has prospered until from the follow- 
ing figures we must conclude that its perma- 
nence is assured: 

Members in good standing January 1, 1913, 
47,248; death benefits paid in 1912, f 410,908.33; 
total assets, f 1,578,221.80 ; liabilities, $66,- 
424,55. 

Companions of the Forest 

From the report of the Sovereign Com- 
mander at the tenth biennial session of the 
Kovereing Camp, June, 1913, I note the follow- 
ing: 

"The Companions of the Forest is a Wom- 
an's Order, said to be encouraged by the Paci- 
fic Jurisdiction, and operating in that terri- 
tory only. Mrs. Nelly V. Pyles, formerly act- 
ively identified with the Women of Woodcraft, 
is its Worthy Companion; Mrs. A. B. Hawke, 
its Grand Clerk, with headquarters at Pueblo, 
Colo. We have not received any official re- 
ports from this society except its roster of of- 
ficers, but understand that it has made con- 
siderable progress and is likely to become a 
worthy Auxiliary, if authorized." 
Boys of Woodcraft 

The Boys of Woodcraft is an Order some- 
what similar in purpose and teaching to the 
Boy Scout organization. It is comprised of 
boys of an age ranging between ten and eight- 



Perfected Woodcraft 125 

een years, and designed to train the young for 
wholesome citizenship, and at the same time 
for better "sovereignty" in the W. O. W., to 
which they are admitted free upon attaining 
the age of eighteen. Each member of the Boys 
of Woodcraft is called a "Cadet." 

The Order disciplines its membership in 
parliamentary practices, good behavior, the ob- 
servation of the Golden JRule being one of its 
cardinal tenets, social amusement, excursions, 
camping trips, drills, and the observation, in 
boyhood, of the principles of Perfected Wood- 
craft. 

It has been called the Kindergarten of Per- 
fected Woodcraft, and bears somewhat the re- 
lation to the W. O. W. as does the modern 
American training school to the American col- 
lege. It is the source from which material for 
the great fraternity is drawn ; and while teach- 
ing the manly virtues to healthy boys, it is an 
academy from which "Young America" is 
trained for the best practice of the tenets set 
out in the ritual and teachings of the Woodmen 
of the World. 

This Auxiliary for the training of boys, 
in its less than half a decade of progressive 
history, has made a record over which it may 
well feel enthused. Major General 0. L. Math- 
er, who has general charge of the young Order, 
recently made a glowing report of its work. 
In the last two years, he stated, the number of 



126 Perfected Woodcraft 

camps had increased from two hundred eleven, 
with a membership of 7,193, to three hundred 
fifty, with over ten thousand enrolled. In that 
biennial term the B. O. W. gave to the Wood- 
men of the World over a thousand men. 

The Boys of Woodcraft is the only organ- 
ization for boys in America having a Funeral 
Benefit Association in connection; and this 
latter is perhaps its most distinguishing fea- 
ture. Paying an initiatory fee of twenty-five 
cents upon joining the Order, each Cadet may 
be a member of this Association by paying ten 
to fifteen cents per month into a common fund, 
from which, if in good standing at the time of 
his death, $100 is paid to his funeral expenses. 
Only the Boys of Woodcraft can join this As- 
sociation, which now numbers a membership of 
about four thousand. The first death loss in 
this Association was paid to Mrs. Minx, of 
New Orleans, La., whose son, Cadet F. Minx, 
was killed by falling into a kettle of boiling 
water. Strange co-incidence ! Treacherous 
water was the death instrument with which 
the first member, alike of the Woodmen of the 
World and Boys of Woodcraft, met a sudden, 
unexpected and tragic death. 



CHAPTEE VI. 
CITIZENSHIP AND THE SOVEEEIGN 

When I have first attempted to show what 
a man is, and what a citizen is, in the true 
sense of the word, in addition to being a man, 
I shall conclude by submitting the proposition 
to the candid judgment of the tribunal of un- 
iversal citizenship that Woodcraft's principles 
not only make for the high citizenship which 
approaches nearest the ideal standard demand- 
ed of an ideal government, but that without 
these principles, it is absolutely impossible to 
have a citizenship that is true or a civilization 
that is high. 

I once had a friend, who in public utter- 
ance, declared that citizenship is founded upon 
two principles ; one on the unity of God's crea- 
tion and man's relation to it, and the other of 
the unity of man to man. I have never found 
a better explanation in such simple words. 
The first of these two principles was portrayed 
in plain and simple words by England's 
master penman, who one day, having plucked a 
tiny flower from an old red wall of ruin, spoke 
to it thus, 

" Little flower, 

But if I could understand what you are, 
Boot in all, and all in all, 
I should know what God and man is." 
The second principle finds its filling in the 
sublime injunction which from the cloud-pil- 



128 Perfected Woodcraft 

lowed peak of Sinai has thundered through 
the centuries : "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as 
thyself." 

A citizen, in simple words, is an inhabi- 
tant, male or female, of some specified place, 
and living in some kind of fixed relations — 
fixed by God and by social, political or reli- 
gious environment. To make the proper calcu- 
lations of these relations, to understand just 
how, delicately and deftly, surely and sanely, 
God has joined man to man and to the under 
creation, the subordinate world, it is necessary, 
first of all, to see and understand what a man 
really is. "Foolish," you say; "unnecessary; 
absurd. Why, we all know what a man is." 
Let us see. 

Of course we know that he is more than 
flesh and blood, and always dictates and gov- 
erns with a power that surpasses the instinct 
and the passion of the brute. But more than 
this; I have read, back toward the very be- 
ginning of that great Book of God, what seems 
a very strange definition of man — one pecul- 
iarly out of harmony with the ordinary notions 
of him. It simply says of him that he was 
created in the image of God. But this is the 
very secret of his nature. Up to this point he 
is no greater than the flower that sheds its 
temporary fragrance by the roadside; the 
horse, that rules its kingdom of the plow and 



Perfected Woodcraft 129 

dray; the mountain, that sits in solitary gran- 
deur, the wonder of all natural scenery; and 
the rolling sea, with the mighty power of its 
storm-tossed waves and scenic splendor. But 
when we take into onsideration the definition 
quoted, he is above nature. It is very true 
that all else besides man was created with won- 
derful grandeur; — every flower is a theatre of 
beauty, every subeam a burst of glory, and the 
way of creation is a path of truth inlaid with 
wisdom's gold, from the tiniest dewdrop to the 
human mind. But man's physical being is 
simply the divine fashion of his inward power. 
The man God created in His image is the inner 
being. It is for that reason that man cannot 
be what God is, physically, — if we may say that 
God is a physical being, — and thus it was said 
he was created on image. There is a vast dif- 
ference between an image and an inner being. 
You may gaze upon a piece of scenery — a river, 
a landscape garden, or a symmetrically formed 
and wonderful steed — and you may sit down 
with charcoal and paper, or canvass and color- 
ing matter, to paint its picture. But when all 
is done, you have simply grasped the attributes 
of the scene; for the innate being of that land- 
scape is life, and you cannot reproduce life, 
though you may paint a picture of something 
that possesses it. 

Man has the attributes of God, though 
not his innate being. The attributes are love 



130 Perfected Woodcraft 

and mercy and truth, which man possesses; 
while His innate being is omnipotence and 
omniscience, for nothing trat the former could 
create, and nothing but the latter could know 
how to create. Thus man possesses the attri- 
butes of God, though not in the slightest degree 
His innate being; and it is man's first great 
mission upon earth to weave upon the web of 
life the flower of an upright and stainless char- 
acter. 

This man I have described is the being 
which God created and set upon the earth as a 
citizen — a citizen with a brain to discern, a will 
to command, and a conscience to guide. It is 
always necessary to take an active attitude in 
discussing the meaning and function of citi- 
zenship. We must regard it as power, as work, 
as duty. And the probable reason its mean- 
ing does not come as a thunderboltof responsi- 
bility to each man, is that it is one of those 
problems, the very magnitude of which seems 
to place it in the category of the commonplace, 
and to exclude from all reason and thought 
its individual application and interpretation. 
But the individual appropriation of the les- 
sons of each day's simple problems is the prov- 
ince of good citizenship, — the living out in ev- 
ery day's simple life of the mightiest truths 
within the ability and compass of the human 
conception, the truths which teach us of the 
rights of family and fellowman, revealed 



» : 



Perfected Woodcraft 131 

through the divine economy of dependent and 
related living. 

Citizenship does not simply mean existing 
institutions of policy and government, but rath- 
er a power and right that man possesses with 
which he is able to change these existing condi- 
tions and create new and better ones to suit 
his taste and feeling of justice. How all-im- 
portant, considering this definition of true cit- 
izenship, that men have the proper ability and 
disposition to judge rightly, and having judged, 
to temper goverments and governing with the 
tender leaven of mercy. To this end, how ab- 
solutely necessary that such principles as are 
the basic tenets of Woodcraft be from youth 
and at the family fireside instilled into the 
race of men ! 

But further: Citizenship does mean 
the entering into the component parts of a gov- 
ernment. It means protection and liberty. 
It involves, inextricably, the principles of 
patriotism and moral manhood. It insures 
the happiness and pleasure which comes from 
the satisfaction of just government and safe 
protection. More than all, it is a high office, 
to which we are all alike elected. We should 
regard it as any other office of trust, because 
the whole nation may feel the act of a single 
citizen, however obscure, in the use or abuse of 
his privileges. It is impossible to live for any 
length of time with great privileges, such as 



132 Perfected Woodcraft 

those which citizenship confers, without 
bringing upon ourselves the gravest of respon- 
sibilities also. These responsibilities of every 
American citizen are the protection of the right 
on all occasions, the love of justice, and the 
helping of our fellowmen. In the rotunda of 
our national capitol, high over all the master- 
pieces from the hand and brain of versatile 
American genius, chiseled in its great brass 
dome, are the simple words of the prophet of 
old, "What doth the Lord require of thee, but 
to love mercy, do justly, and walk humbly with 
thy God?" Could words be found which 
would more characteristically describe the 
teachings and instructions of the Order to 
which we belong? If Woodcraft does not 
teach these things it means nothing whatever 
to any Sovereign. 

In the fidelity to truth and duty of her 
members rests the only source of any nation's 
strength. Woodcraft takes a further step 
when it teaches every Sovereign, in addition to 
loving truth and doing justly, to protect his 
home and family. This he does by taking out 
insurance in the W. O. W., thus paying the 
Order to do his protecting for him. The prin- 
ciple of payment for protection is universal. 
Governments have always exacted pay for their 
services to citizens. In return for taxes, all 
the way from the exorbitance of Roman levy 
to the present system of the world's republics, 



Perfected Woodcraft 133 

changeable at the will of the masses, the prin- 
ciple has had universal practice. Why, even 
God exacted the tithe of His people, in return 
for His exercised protection of fatherhood and 
patriarchy. And the central idea and aim of 
Woodcraft, is, to use the language of its Found- 
er himself, "to furnish the greatest possible 
protection at the smallest possible cost." 

But the greatest good of Woodcraft, so 
far as its relation to citizenship is concerned, 
lies not in its practical phase of protection, 
but rather in the principles for which it stands. 
Just now, of all the times in the world's his- 
tory, when the nation is calling to her citizens 
to make her citizenship the noblest in the 
world, and to take from the crowns of earth 
the wreaths of victor and place them upon 
her own brow as the supreme peace-arbiter 
of the world, the safe, sane peace-principles of 
Woodcraft have a most striking and appropri- 
ate significance. The more peace loving and 
noble the citizenship, the higher the civiliza- 
tion. It is, in the last analysis, the noble sen- 
timents in men's bosoms that stand as the baro- 
metrical measures of any nation's progress. 
The civilization thus determined influences 
government, and government reflects the senti- 
ments of its citizens. 

The success of governments in the swing 
of history has been in exact proportion to the 
moral sentiment of its citizenship, and the cit- 



134 Perfected Woodcraft 

izen's pride in being such. Pride of citizenship 
has of course had different effects: In Athens 
Pericles and his compeers reduced the number 
of citizens to men of pure Attic descent, and 
decay set in because of wars between Athenian 
citizens and those who claimed or wished to be 
such, while Some made all her subjects citi- 
zens, and thus held them in quietude and sub- 
mission, and Eoman citizenship became the 
pride of the known world. As Eome advanced 
toward the absolutism of the Caesars, the Gov- 
ernment gradually ceased to reflect the true 
conception of citizenship, and lost its sway. 
The reason that the old world empires have 
failed so universally and so miserably is simply 
that the people, when finally awakened, as al- 
ways they have been thus far, seized upon their 
inherent rights, and snatched from greedy mon- 
archs the reins of power. The French Kevolu- 
tion is an excellent example of this. 

What we need most of all in this country 
today is an an educated citizenship ; and Wood- 
craft is one of the educational factors potent in 
the freeing of citizens from the dense thral- 
dom of ignorance and the lawlessness that 
comes from ignorance. In the educating of the 
masses is to be found the ultimate solution 
of all the problems of politics, of morals, of 
statecraft and of civic weal, that troop about 
us for study and for settlement. Education 
is the bulwark of high citizenship, the develop- 



Perfected Woodcraft 135 

er of the home, the "shield and buckler-' of na- 
tional prestige. It is the "pillar of cloud by 
day and the pillar of fire by night" to the toil- 
ing citizens of this land, to guide them into 
paths of peace and safety, and to assure the 
protection of the home and family. Wood- 
craft stands for these things. Working with 
the average man, it develops him into a broad- 
minded and unprejudiced citizen who loves the 
truth, and graciously recognizes great men and 
great qualities. It aims to meet the present 
need for statesmen in this country who are 
gifted to unite the discordant forces of gov- 
ernments and to harmonize the diverse ef- 
forts of men into wholesome and progressive 
legislation. It is producing in its ranks help- 
ers and leaders of men, and examplars to non- 
Sovereigns of the virtues that build and con- 
serve the state, society and home. 

O we need good men-more Woodmen-and 
a citizenship in consequence that cherishes all 
noble sentiment; every inch of the ground for 
up-lifted life fought out and maintained, and 
every honest act rewarded by another one. 
The need of the hour is to be met by Wood- 
craft in its ability and anxiety to produce a 
race of men that will rise up and crush out 
the evils which beset the peoples of the earth. 
If every Sovereign, at present and in the fu- 
ture, would but highly resolve and nobly de- 
termine to give to home and country his high- 



136 Perfected Woodcraft 

est service, we might never fear for the nation's 
future. The continued cry of that freedom 
and patriotism which the "fathers'' intended as 
the rock-bed of its foundation would soon be- 
come the shibboleth of hope to every people 
of every land and clime. 

I believe that the young Sovereign of today 
has the best opportunity for taking hold and 
ruling through the divine function of citizen- 
ship that was ever offered in all the swing of 
time, because here in America is the first large- 
scale test of the democratic principle of the peo- 
ples' rule, the highest recognition of the exem- 
plification of the function of true citizenship. 
The individual young Sovereign of the twenti- 
eth century is the central figure on the stage of 
life; and governments, systems, offices and 
precedents are all dependent upon him. He is 
the "sovereign" power, and these creatures of 
his hand are but servants to wait upon his 
bidding. The making of clean and healthy 
laws insures the work God intended in creat- 
ing earth and man, and HSs work is promoted 
every time a Sovereign goes to the ballot box 
and registers his demand for purer government. 
Democracy is still on trial in this country, and 
it remains for the Woodcraft of today, and of 
the near future, enlisting in its ranks the noble 
of the nation's youth, to decide whether at the 
bar of reason and experience it shall stand 
approved and vindicated — a mighty heritage to 



Perfected Woodcraft 13T 

the coming cycles of posterity. Let the young 
Sovereign of today, lifting the keen lance of 
young and vigorous ability against the fostered 
and cherished traditions of aristocracy and oli- 
garchic power, untramelled by commercial 
greed and vicious graft, with his splendid in- 
fluence falling upon the masses of mankind, 
go forth to spread the truths of democracy and 
Christian citizenship, and make men free in- 
deed! 

Without the principles discussed in this 
chapter — principles which are the chief tenets 
in our grand fraternity, it is as impossible to 
have a high degree of civilization and of up- 
right citizenship as it is impossible to main- 
tain a formidable army without generals and 
men. The true Sovereign — one who justifies 
his title to the name — is a citizen in the truest 
sense, a champion of the oppressed, and an 
evangel of earth's probable ultimate Utopia. 



CHAPTEE VII. 
THE UNIFOKM BANK OF WOODCRAFT 

Whatever we may say of the beautiful sen- 
timents enkindled and feelings stirred by the 
appeal of words like "home," "family," "child/' 
"wife/' and other such terms, yet no part of 
the work done by or connected with Woodcraft 
is so alluring and inspirational as the military 
phase. This is emphasized in the degree teams 
of progressive camps all over the land. 

No work ever done in all the world's swing 
of time is more attractive than the military act- 
ivities of its generalship and soldiery. Per- 
haps the most fascinating literature is that 
which tells of conquest. One of the things 
that make the Bible charming reading to one 
not a Christian is its vivid and glowing des- 
cription of battles fought in Jehovah's name, 
the brilliant campaigns of the "hosts of the 
Lord" — such descriptions as that of the des- 
truction of Sennacharib, the fall of Nineveh, 
amazing exploits of such men as Moses, 
Samson and others. 

In fact, the whole history of the world's 
advancing civilization has found itself inex- 
tricably interwoven with the marching armies 
of able and powerful governments, the over- 
throw of monarchies and aristocratic regimes, 
and the establishment of new empires and dem- 
ocracies. All by the spilling of blood, to be 
sure, but done to the music of thrilling hoof- 
clatter, patriotic yelling, and martial fife and 
drum. 



Perfected Woodcraft 139 

In very early times there was little of 
what we call "drill." The method of warfare 
consisted of every man's seizing, at the call 
of the ruler, upon whatever kind of weapon he 
could pick up, and unceremoniously plunging 
forth, and awkwardly slaying and being slain, 
in individual combats and hand-to-hand fights 
with members of the opposing force. There 
was practice, to be sure, but little or no con- 
certed, systematic, all-together drill. 

But, as I have said, it all makes very in- 
terested reading. And the world's greatest 
characters, so considered, have been developed 
through the power of the sword. Of what in- 
terest would Alexander the Great be to us, 
reading of the period in which he lived, had it 
not been for his splendid though brutal tour 
of world invasion? There is something abso- 
lutely entrancing in that story of mighty con- 
quest; without it the man's life would be en- 
tirely fruitless of interest or consequence, eith- 
er to his own age, or to us today. Julius 
Caesar is said to have been an orator of some 
note, and truly was a conservative statesman; 
but he, too, would be lost in oblivion's cess- 
pool, no doubt, were it not for the conquests 
of his unnumbered legions — in Britian, in 
Gaul, and elsewhere. 

Caesar had system, drill, but this was a 
later day; and the man profited, as did the 
Spartans, by the laxity, the inefficiency, and the 



140 Perfected Woodcraft 

failure of the military life of the long-gone 
ages. The Spartan soldiery had been the most 
noted and successful of ancient times. Sparta 
was the great drill-city of ancient ^history. 
She profited by the failure of eastern empires; 
and self-denial, unyielding acumen and deter- 
mination, and positive refusal to surrender, 
account for her success. Later on she got lax 
in her discipline, and lazy. Her fighting force 
— and the term had included nearly all the men 
of fighting age — had been taught that "to sur- 
render is disgrace; to die, honor." But when 
some of her leading family heads were shut in 
on the little isle of Corcyraea, and surrendered 
rather than to refuse and die fighting, — well, 
Sparta had seen the most dazzling day of her 
splendid military prowess and prestige; and 
her future gains were the results mostly 
of fortune and the elements. 

Drill means system, and without system 
churches, business, literature, — everything of 
value would cease to exist, and Chaos would, 
forthwith, spring full-orbed from out the brow 
of Order. The drill part of Woodcraft, or the 
degree team phase, is the system of the Order. 
The very secret of its progressivity and amaz- 
ing success, lies in the military part of it. 

The Uniform Rank of Woodcraft is semi- 
military in character, and was organized in 
1903. Subordinate to the Sovereign Camp, it 
is by it recognized as an official Auxiliary of 



Perfected Woodcraft 141 

the Order. It has military drills, regulations, 
and encampments, and is properly and ef- 
ficiently officered. Its primary purpose is to 
create a uniform standard of exemplification 
of the floor work of the ritual of the fraternity. 
It participates in the dedication of Forests, 
unveilings of Woodmen monuments, memor- 
ial day exercises, laying of cornerstones, in 
parades and encampments. There are three 
styles of uniforms used: the "dress/' or blue, 
the "white," and the "service," or khaki. Na- 
tional encampments are regularly held, and at 
some center of population where interested 
thousands may attend. Cash prizes are of- 
fered, and this stimulates efficiency in the drill 
and floor work. An official drill manual, con- 
taining all military instruction, governs the 
drill work of this organization, while the floor 
work is directed by the Protection Degree of 
the Order. 

The drill teams in the camps are enrolled 
as companies in the Uniform Eank. The 
Major General is the Sovereign Clerk of the 
W. O. W., J. T. Yates, and at his office these 
teams are assigned to regiments, brigades and 
divisions. 

Besides the great national encampments, 
there are district encampments, arranged in 
different parts of the United States and Can- 
ada for the convenience of degree teams and 
Sovereigns in each section, many of whom are 



142 Perfected Woodcraft 

not able to attend the great national encamp- 
ments on account of the great expense and 
loss of time incident to traveling so long a 
distance. 

The drill department of the Woodmen of 
the World is steadily gaining in popular favor. 
Mr. Fraser is still the General, Mr. Yates the 
Major-General, and Col. C. L. Mather is the 
Adjutant General. 

Woodcraft's militia does not pretend to 
keep alive the dead, or rapidly dying, idea of 
war and bloodshed. Anything but that — for 
the Order's teachings are symbolical of peace. 
But the decline of war will never take away the 
beauty and charm of war implements, uniform, 
and regalia. Woodcraft takes the uniform, 
but with it not the implements of war, but 
rather those of labor, — the beedle and the axe 
— for its insignia of system and order. 

The axe — what thoughts the word brings 
to the the mass-mind ! For the masses use the 
axe, and similar tools. The axe is to be taken 
as symbolical of all work implements. It rep- 
resents the dignity of labor, the merit of hand- 
toil, the sublimity of honest effort, put forth 
with axes, hammers, crowbars, chisels, 
wrenches and the like. Somehow these very 
implements have come to be looked down upon, 
and the starched cuff, the slick high collar, 
the gold-head cane and high hat are regarded 
as the true badges of manhood and merit. 



Perfected Woodcraft 143 

Cheap badges! Worthless merit! Complete 
victory will never come to those who are try- 
ing to work out the true mission of today — 
to solve its social, business, labor and capital 
problems — until every corporation and money- 
ed interest in this land is willing to come 
out into the honest open, and say with Chel- 
sea's Sage : "Venerable to me is the hard hand 
oi the Craftsman, crooked, coarse; venerable 
too, his rugged face, all weather-tanned, be- 
soiled, with tis rude intelligence; for it is the 
face of a man living manlike! Oh, but the 
more venerable for thy rudeness, and even be- 
cause we must pity as well as love thee! 
Hardly entreated brother, for us was thy back 
so bent; for us were thy straight limbs and 
fingers so deformed. Thou wert our conscript, 
on whom the lot fell; and fighting our battles 
wert so marred." 

The axe — symbol of peaceful, honest labor ; 
weapon of industry; exemplar of worth; badge 
of manhood! 

What is the intrinsic value of the degree 
team to the camp and Sovereigns? 

First of all, it serves to hold the member- 
ship to attendance, after it is once obtained. 
Ever since the dawn of fraternal organizations, 
founders and promoters have sought for good 
methods of maintaining attendance and unity 
of membership. Experience has furnished 
abundant proof that the social side of any 



144 Perfected Woodcraft 

body must be developed and fostered by some- 
thing more than the mere opportunity of com- 
ing together for the transaction of business. 
There must be something actively attractive — 
even more attractive, in many cases, than the 
glowing hearth and the family altar after the 
day's hard toil. For really duty plays very 
little part in the matter of the average Sove- 
reign's regular presence in the Forest. 

The degree staff is the most important 
factor in any growing camp. It promotes en- 
thusiasm. The same inspiration that comes 
to the soldier and makes him forget the shock 
and roar of musketry and cannon — the stir- 
ring mtosic of the martial air — controls the 
step and discipline of the team member. It 
stirs his soul. It quickens the lagging pace of 
the Sovereign who hears it and directs his 
step into the paths of energy and profit. 

Enthusiasm must go before all real work. 
Without enthusiasm Demosthenes could never 
have compelled the laggard Athenians to "go 
against Phillip;" Themistocles would never 
have built his master fleet ; Hannibal, with his 
vast soldiery, would never have crossed the 
Alps; Napoleon would never have risen above 
his humble lieutenancy ; there would have been 
no French nor American Eevolution; no Eng- 
lish Eeformation; no up-springing of the 
Christian Church; no Marathon; no Salamis; 



Perfected Woodcraft 145 

no Waterloo; no Austerlitz; no Yorktown; no 
Gettysburg; no — 

But why go further? There would have 
been no Woodcraft. First in the heart of 
Father Eoot there pulsed the quickening en- 
thusiasm of a longing for service^ of unalloyed 
helpfulness to his fellow-kind; — then Wood- 
craft sprang forth. How is it to be main- 
tained? Bather how has it thus far been 
maintained? And how has it grown to such 
amazing proportions in so short a time? 
Enthusiasm. Degree team. Drill. 

The carrying out of our ritual can be ef- 
fectively accomplished only with the degree 
team. What is more humiliating than to 
watch an uncostumed and unceremonious 
group of Sovereigns read — actually, as is true 
in hnudreds of cases, BEAD — the Joseph scene, 
the burial scene, and the rest? On the other 
hand, what a pure, unselfish lesson they teach 
when properly conducted at the hands of an 
able and well equipped degree team! 

The team makes for efficiency and perma- 
nency. The greatest use of the team is, of 
coures, in the initiation. The first impres- 
sion of Woodcraft that the novice gets is very 
likely to be a lasting one. Let the ritualistic 
ceremonies be put up good and strong before 
him, and he will go away so impressed with 
the splendid lessons our Order purports to 
teach, as that his enthusiasm will spread con- 



146 Perfected Woodcraft 

tagiously, until his brothers, sons and friends 
are Woodmen, true and loyal as himself. 

Then agam, the drill work connected with 
Woodcraft places it beyond all cavil or dis- 
pute among the high educational forces of the 
age. It is a mark of progress in the leading 
institutions of learning in this country that 
they have as part of their required work either 
the military drill or else regular and system- 
atic gymnasium work. In fact, this is about 
the only absolutely required work of many of 
our colleges and universities. Why, even 
many of our churches maintaii. it, some to a 
greater and some to a lesser degree. To the 
effective carrying out of the vv ell-prepared rit- 
ualism of the up-springing Catholicism of me- 
diaeval history is attributable its early wide- 
spread influence and success. 

The drill develops the physique and mind 
of the Sovereign at the same time. Scientists 
and doctors say that nothing is better for the 
proper development of agility and graceful- 
ness of the body than this. Certainly noth- 
ing trains the attention better. It is at once 
an incentive to higher physical development, 
mental stimulation, and a more righteous man- 
hood. The consciousness of the importance of 
silent, effective work, like that of the drill, 
enthuses the admiring Sovereign with a high 
desire to join the active work himself; and 
once into it, the stimulating sense of fellow- 



Perfected Woodcraft 147 

ship and brotherhood, together with the con- 
sciousness of his importance to the Camp 
and the Order, outweighs all the endurance, 
the hardship of practice on extra nights and 
overtime; and the participating Sovereign 
feels a closer kinship with his fellow- kind 
and with Divinity itself — the divinity of suc- 
cessful effort. 

Finally, the drill work is the biggst ad- 
vertisement that Wodcraft can possibly have. 
Not that the Order needs any advertisement, 
any more, or as much, as some others; but be- 
cause it is one of the ear-marks of successful 
business methods. Various methods are seized 
upon by big concerns to get their business be- 
fore the people. Our daily papers are full of 
their adds. Thousands never care to read them. 
Dodgers and hand-bills and circulars are scat- 
tered broad-cast and thousands never pick them 
up, or if they do, consign them to the waste- 
basket. But the well-equipped degree team of 
Woodcraft, put out on parade before a crowd- 
ed house or street, gets larger returns than all 
the adds and circulars devised by the ingenu- 
ity of business bosses. 



OHAPTEE VIII. 

LITERATURE'S INFLUENCE AND THE 

PRESS OF WOODCRAFT 

Literature's inflence upon the course and 
trend of human history has been vast and 
varied. From the earliest dawn of the trans- 
misison of knowledge by written symbols, the 
writings of man have had their influence, pre- 
dominant more or less as time has swung 
through the centuries, — until today they fill 
and flood the world. 

It is said that Alexander the Great car- 
ried with him on his tour of world invasion a 
copy of Homer, and that the participants of 
the ten years' master seige of Troy and the 
unfortunate Greeks in their subsequent wan- 
derings, became the constant companions of 
his idle hours, and his inspiration to continued 
conquest. 

I have no doubt but that the story told 
us is true. How far the two epics of the pre- 
historic Grecian poet have served as influen- 
tial factors in the building up processes that 
have characterized the historical epochs since 
that time, it would be impossible to say with 
accuracy. But I advance the proposition that 
no great nation ever rose and flourished in 
all the world's vast stretch of history, whose 
growth and prosperity was not occasioned, in 
large measure, by written literature transmit- 
ted from remotest times, either of its own or- 
igin or from some other source. 



Perfected Woodcraft 149 

A few of earth's greatest characters of 
whom we read today are, partially at least, 
the products of imagination or of fancy, hand- 
ed down from sire to son, until the written 
records of them srung into being. I submit 
that no great man ever lived, since the earli- 
est dawn of written accounts, but has been in- 
fluenced in his career of history making by 
stories of other exploits than his own; of the 
destruction or establishment of other empires, 
of the introduction of other reforms, and the 
building of other kingdoms. If history, as 
Carlyle states, is but the biography of a few 
great men, then the influence exerted on its 
makers by written accounts, by directory 
guidance or the stimulating inspiration of high 
ideals, is unquestionable and vast. From the 
earliest literature of the hieroglyphs of Egypt, 
Assyria and Greece, to the vast body of writ- 
ten books, of government pamphlets, of ar- 
ticles of research, the magazine fiction and 
presentation of today, is a great leap, and I 
shall not attempt in this connection to give, 
except in barest outline, more than two or 
three of the different national examples of 
this influence on the course and trend of the 
world's historic development. 

Perhaps the best illustration is to be found 
among the early Greeks. We find them at the 
dawn of the historical period, unlike the in- 
habitants of any other country of the world, 



150 Perfected Woodcraft 

already rapidly developing in civilization, and 
well started on the road which ultimately led 
to the most startlingly brilliant history now on 
record. Unquestionably the story of their 
ancient mythological and prehistoric heroes of 
that far-gone age^ — the mere legends handed 
down to them, at first from memory, and later 
embalmed upon the faithful page of the scribe 
— heroes like Theseus, who slew the Minotaur, 
and defeated the Amazons; Heracles, who 
killed the Nemean lion, and cleansed the 
stables of Augeas; and Minos, the renowned 
law-giver — inspired the Greeks of later eras 
with fortitude, with ambition, and with pride. 

To the written history of Jason and the 
Golden Fleece is directly attributable, in large 
measure, the adventurous spirit of the Athen- 
ian sailors, to whose efforts Athens owed not 
only her master fleet, but her maratime com- 
mercial splendor as well. And Homer's story 
of the siege of Troy, above referred to, doubt- 
less was partially responsible for the later 
developed bitterness and acumen of the un- 
yielding soldiery of Sparta. 

If the swing of the pendulum of Grecian 
history was forced progressward by the influ- 
ence of her literature, borrowed as it was from 
farther east, history in truth repeated itself 
in the case of the world's next great empire, 
Eome. Home! which modeled itself 
after Greece. Eome! the trustee of the vast 



Perfected Woodcraft 151 

legacy of the East to the West. Eome! the 
Eternal. Why was Eome eternal and the do- 
main of her sovereignty as wide as the world? 
Because of the strengrh of her leaders, her 
liberality in the granting of the franchise, the 
easy intercommunication with all parts of the 
empire, from Africa to the Baltic, and from 
Gaul to the Danube and the East, which she 
established; — yes, but most of all besause of 
the complex and wonderful system of educa- 
tion which she developed, and the consequent 
enlightenment of posterity by the brilliance 
and splendor of her writers, and disseminators 
of the principles of science, of law and equity, 
of policy and government. And the brilliance 
of the Eternal City, the light caught from 
Greece and Egypt and the Orient, and swung 
westward, dispelled with its resplendant glow 
the gloom and despair of the long Dark Age, 
and brightened the path to the evoluted na- 
tions of modern times. 

This mediaeval or dark age in the world's 
history is usually that most dreaded, alike by 
the student, the teacher, and the historian. 
But it is here that the theme has its most sig- 
nificant application. In the centuries of 
gloom and despond in which the world was 
plunged upon the fall of Eome, there seemed 
to be no hand to snatch from oblivion the 
recorded masterpieces of the world's literati, 
and the latter's mission of the enlightenment 



152 Perfected Woodcraft 

of posterity, through the carelessness and ir 
responsibility of authoritative preservation 
came to the very verge of the dangerous "Scyl 
la and Charybdis" of destruction and decay 
But far back in the dim period of the unrecord 
ed past a few men here and there resolved to 
live the hermit's life of seclusion and poverty, 
thinking thereby only of their personal salva- 
tion, and little dreaming of the service their 
followers might render to the future centuries 
of history. Their admirers farther west be- 
gan to cluster in groups, and builded monas- 
teries. It was in their houses that a work 
of preservation was carried on of definite ben- 
efits, or services for posterity so vast as to be 
fairly incalculable. And it is to the Human- 
ists and the copyists monks of the up-springing 
Catholicism of mediaeval history that we owe 
the conservation of all the written works of all 
the ages to that time. 

But not until the time of Guttenburg and 
Caxton did literature assume the potency and 
influence which it today possesses. The mod- 
ern age is the period preeminently influenced 
by literature. It is the age of the world's 
greatest writers; the age of Milton, Shakes- 
peare, and Dryden; of Swift and Pope; of 
Luther, Calvin, and Zwingli; of Longfellow, 
Whittier, Poe, Hawthorne, and the many oth- 
ers, the products of whose pens have wielded 
such a power over the development of that ver- 



Perfected Woodcraft 153 

satility which today is an essential to success. 
It is the age of the printed sheet. 

Now to be sure, literature in its narrowed 
sense does not signify nor include newspapers. 
The world of editors and reporters, from him 
who sits, high-browed, late into the night in 
the editorial chair of a great daily, down to the 
"devil" of the concern, all are shut out from 
the critic's narrowed definition of literary men. 
Nevertheless, more broadly speaking, new^s- 
sheets are literature, though not of that finer 
calibre that characterizes the staid philoso- 
phy, the swinging song, the gentle lyric, the 
faithful description and charming narrative of 
greater culture and deeper wisdom. 

Every organization, every business under- 
taking, every corporation, every school and 
church, to be successful must needs be adver- 
tised. The news of its progress must be given 
to the waiting world, and those already inter- 
ested in its operation must be enthused for 
greater effort. 

And so, almost from the very inception of 
the Woodmen of the World, it has been the 
proud possessor of a news sheet. The first 
edition of the Sovereign Visitor was published 
at Clinton, Iowa, in December, 1890, just six 
monhs after the brave little band of men had 
met at Omaha, and the first feeble lights of 
Perfected Woodcraft had begun to shine. 
Quite an unimposing little sheet of four small 



154 Perfected Woodcraft 

pages. The caller at the W. O. W. building 
at Omaha should never go away without look- 
ing at the files to see this interesting issue. It 
seems that this first edition made quite a "hit," 
since many complimentary paragraphs appeared 
in subsequent issues of the paper. The Clin- 
ton (Iowa) Herald, the Baltimore Protector, 
and other sheets were full of praise. The pa- 
per was immediately moved to Omaha. 

At first the visitor was published and 
financed largely by Mr. Eoot himself, and was 
made a subscription affair. But soon it was 
determined that the sheet of Woodcraft should 
go, free of all charge, into the home of every 
Sovereign within its ranks. A competent ed- 
itor was placed in charge, and almost from 
the beginning down to date Mr. Sam G. 
Smythe has generaled its editing and publica- 
tion. 

And what of the paper's purposes, mis 
si on, and influence? 

First of all, let me say that there is noth- 
ing connected with the Order that is calcu- 
lated to have quite the influence in educating 
—not entertaining, but EDUCATING— the 
masses of Sovereigns into that full knowledge 
and appreciation of the true grandeur of our 
organziation, as our monthly visitor. To be 
sure, the Sovereign Visitor does not pretend — 
it cannot — to be an exposition of our secret 
work for Sovereigns. It is intended to spread 



Perfected Woodcraft 155 

the news of the different camps to the world of 
Woodcraft, and to inspire each Sovereign with 
a desire for a thorough knowledge of every 
part of the ceremony and teachings of the 
Craft's brilliant work. 

The Visitor is the voice of Woodcraft 
speaking in the homes of the membership. It 
is intelligent, active, virile, alive, interesting, 
militant. It not only tells the Sovereigns what 
the world of Woodcraft is doing every month ; 
not only goes outside of Woodcraft and tells 
the news of the world; not only gathers, pub- 
lishes and preserves, data of tremendous inter- 
est from the history and literature of the 
past; not only serves as a tonic or stimulant 
to patriotic study of the teachings of the 
Order, — but stands out boldly and openly and 
frankly for every cause that needs assistance, 
holds out the helping hand to distressed hu- 
manity everywhere, and stands up in the 
broad field of universal brotherhood and uni- 
versal righteousness, and in eevry conflict that 
rages in the field of ethics and justice, is the 
guiding star to every Sovereign for correct and 
reliable information. It is the flag of Wood- 
craft, waving to the world, the royal ensign of 
our progress, the standard of the Order's un- 
failing and inevitable advance. The axe it 
bears upon its front is the implement with 
which the vast, well organized structure of 
our numerical strength is being builded. 



156 Perfected Woodcraft 

The mission of the fraternal press of the 
land is of the broadest nature. It is not only 
a symbol, but a protector. If the fraternal 
press stands idle, and problems, agitating the 
nation and the world, and of the most vexing 
nature, go undiscussed at its hands ; if it simp- 
ly preaches the theories of brotherhood and 
love and other noble attributes of men, and 
takes no part in lifting from oppressed humani- 
ty, staggering under its crushing weight of 
pillage and robbery, its vast, almost unbearable 
load, leaving to the religious and other press 
this noble work, — then God pity it, in its er- 
roneous and false understanding of its mission ! 

The Sovereign Visitor is the notable and 
gratifying exception to the rule which some of 
the fraternal press of the country seem so in- 
tent upon following — a rule that leads into the 
"straight and narrow way" of visualized broth- 
erhood and theoretical humanitarianism. The 
Visitor realizes that the membership of the 
Order is made up overwhelmingly of the com 
mon people — Lincoln's favorites, and Jeffer- 
son's and Jackson's and Boot's — and that its 
mission is to lift its voice against injustice and 
w r rong of every kind. It exercises an econom- 
ic and practical, as well as theoretical, protec- 
torate, by its staunch and unyielding champ- 
ionship of applied equality and justice and 
fairness, over the toiling myraids of God's 
kingdom, who live in the sweat of their brow, 



Perfected Woodcraft 157 

are unjustly buffeted about at the hands of a 
cruel and unfeeling bossism, verily paying tri- 
bute the enormity and injustice of which finds 
its best examples in the slavotic regimes of 
villiany, plunder, rapacity, lust, vandalism and 
treachery of the past's most despicable 
conquerors. 

Free from the dominance of political part- 
ies and the interests, the banner of Woodcraft 
flats to a breeze untroubled by intrigue, 
clique-work or chicanery. Just as the true 
religious press of today is untroubled by the 
influence of denominataional dogma or sect- 
prejudice, so the true press of fraternalism, of 
which the Visitor is so good a type, knows no 
party, creed, or sect or class-line in the great 
mass of individuals who comprise its member- 
ship. Its glory is in its democrcacy, freedom 
and breadth. 

The Sovereign Visitor is read in a hun- 
dred thousand homes. What a power it ex- 
erts! What a boundless influence! In many 
thousands of these homes it is the only paper 
read. It moulds the characters of thousands 
of American country boys, who grow up by the 
firesides over which hang the life-size photo- 
graph of Joseph Cullen Root, and on whose 
center tables are stacks of Sovereign Visit- 
ors. It is their literature, their history, their 
second Bible! What an influence! 

Keenly sensitive to its responsibility, let 



158 Perfected Woodcraft 

the paper of Woodcraft continue truly to pre- 
sent the virtues of our Order to the youth of 
this land, courageously defend the right, pro- 
tect the innocent, sustain the weak, and man- 
fully uphold the standards of the true frater- 
nity. The work it will perform should fill the 
earth with the increasing glory of its bright- 
ness. The homes it shines upon and into will 
never lose their appreciation of its faithful- 
ness, but later generations coming upon the 
scene of action, and into the arena flooded 
with its light, will catch a radiance they will re- 
flect to the coming cycles of posterity. It 
soothes the cares, smoothes the furrows, allays 
the pain, hushes the wailing of heart-broken 
widows and orphan children, brightens the 
clouded face, cheers the laggard, comforts the 
downcast, illuminates the gloomy places, makes 
glad the heart of death-sorrow, cheers the dis- 
couraged, gives balm to the aching breast, en- 
lightens the ignorant, softens the shocked and 
pained, and gives new hope for the life ever- 
lasting. What an influence! 



CHAPTER IX. 
IN SICKNESS AND IN DEATH 

I have briefly told the story of the mar- 
velous history of the Woodmen of the World, 
and recounted some of its chief glories. It 
stands for high ideals in the' life of its mem- 
bership. It is the veritable "pillar of cloud 
by day and pillar of fire by night" to its three 
quarter-millon membership, to lead them into 
a nobler life. It stands majestically beam- 
ing its plea for ideals that will make the young 
men as anxious to render full service to their 
fellows as they are to make a fortune. It 
aims primarily to touch the routine duties and 
transactions of the plain man's plain and 
simple life. It teaches that in every profes- 
sion, as in all business life, high ideals are 
necessary. It teaches that the true physi- 
cian has a far higher aim than coining money 
from his knowledge of medicine; that the law- 
yer who spends his life-time in the search for 
truth has a far higher aim than getting rich, 
and possesses an ideal of character and of ser- 
vice that increases with the years. It teaches 
that the ideal of honetsy must be kept before 
one in all the arduous walks of life, if the 
accomplishment of the life be worthy and the 
outcome great. 

But Woodcraft not only teaches the les- 
sons of high ideals to be followed in the beat- 
en path of each day's routine life; it does not 



160 Perfected Woodcraft 

merely hold aloft the standard of honesty 
amid the unprincipled recklessness and un- 
bridled license of present day business meth- 
ods; it not only instructs its Sovereigns every- 
where — in the workshop, on the yard, at the 
anvil, in the field, behind the counter, in the 
offices of professionalism — the true lessons of 
business integrity, of frank and fair dealing, 
and practical fraternity ; — not only these. But 
amid all pain and sorrow incident to failure* 
ill-luck, disaster, defeat, amid sickness and 
shame, death and dependence, it breathes into 
the family heart the overwhelming, omnipotent 
— because God-born and God-sustained — ideal 
of hope, of trust in the reward of unflagging 
sustenance from on high, of belief in a life 
"beyond the vale." If Woodcraft waves the 
banner of honesty and fair dealing to a world 
of workers, its stripes of faith and stars of 
hope are more radiant still in the breathless 
moments of dread sickness ticked off by the 
death-watch. It is in such times that the true 
mission of Woodcraft asserts itself, and the 
true Woodman shows his right and title to the 
name. The period of sickness and death is 
the time of Woodcraft's greatest glory. When 
disease and sickness invade the sacred portals 
f the home, when no saving, health-giving blood 
has been sprinkled on the "lintels and side- 
posts," the ministering hand of the Craft bears 
comfort and flowers to the bed of the languish- 



Perfected Woodcraft 161 

ing, emitting their unalloyed odor of friend- 
ship's holy perfume. And if the inevitable 
comes, the kindly visits and benedictions of 
the Sovereigns blunt the shafts of pain that 
pierce the hearts of those bereaved ones, and 
through their tears they look up and smile, as 
they 

"Sigh for the touch of a vanished hand, 
And the sound of a voice that is still." 
But this is. not all. The deceased is laid 
away by loving hands, and ere long a physi- 
cal memorial is erected at his grave. 

Monuments are as old as the love of man 
for his mates — or, rather, for himself. Man 
has a kind of inherited inclination to perpetu- 
ate himself after he is dead, as well as to at- 
tract attention while he lives. The first great 
evidence of this ,historically speaking, is to 
be found in the pyramids of Egypt. It is 
thought, in the light of facts revealed by an- 
cient reasearch, that each Egyptian Ptolmey or 
ruler, upon coming into power, began to con- 
struct a pyramidal tomb or monument for him- 
self. This was usually laid out on a small 
scale, so that if the builder enjoyed but a brief 
reign he might still have the satisfaction of 
seeing his tomb completed ere he died. As 
time passed, successive layers were added, and 
the height and size of the monument were thus 
proportioned to the length of his reign. These 
monuments are today the strongest memorials 



162 Perfected Woodcraft 

to the tyranny of the ancient Pharaohs; for 
usually the ruler performed no mighty, holy 
work to be the herald of his greatness; he in- 
spired no hearts to manliness and courage; he 
built no civilization. 

Another form of ancient monument was 
the obelisk, a plain and pointed shaft, usually 
much taller than the pyramid, though termin- 
ating in a pyramidal top. The earliest obelisk 
still standing is that at Heliopolis, the sun-city, 
erected by Usertesen the First. Another is 
the so-called "black obelisk" of Shalmaneser 
the Second, in Assyria. 

Alongside the pyramid and obelisk in im- 
portance stood the mausoleum, the name 
l>eing taken from the sepulchral tomb or mon- 
ument to Mausolus, king of Caria, and built by 
his widow, Artemesia, at Halicarnassus. It 
was a most wonderful structure, and was even 
given a place among the seven wonders of the 
world. 

Finally came the statue idea, which is pre- 
served today in our memorial shafts crowned 
by the physical likeness of soldiers, statesmen, 
and men of literature. 

The czars and kings and emperors of earth 
have almost invariably longed to be remem- 
bered by posterity, and to this end they have 
builded for themselves temples, columns, pal- 
aces, and statues. Trajan's Column, the Ap- 
pian Way, the pyramids and obelisks men- 



Perfected Woodcraft 163 

tioned above, and many others, are examples. 
These memorials are of great value to us as 
readers of history. Upon them were inscribed 
the record of the reigns of these rulers, and 
later historians copied the inscriptions before 
they crumbled to decay. And it is possible 
for Sovereigns today to stand before many of 
them, and thus converse at first hand with 
such mighties as Alexander the Great, Caesar, 
Lycurgus, Cicero, and others. 

In later centuries monuments came to be 
reared by the willing hands of others besides 
rulers, and to perpetuate the memory of mar- 
tyrs and patriots who perished in causes that 
were deemed worthy by their fellows. And so 
today we find in almost every large city a 
statue either of some philanthropist, benefac- 
tor, magnate, soldier, or local idol. The monu- 
ments in our present day are emblems of honor 
bestowed by willing hands. The five hundred 
fifty-five foot shaft to Washington at the Na- 
tion's capital is symbolical of his plain and 
simple, yet majestic career. It combines res- 
pect, love, and an anxiety to emulate his vir- 
tues. 

Confederate monuments dot the hills of 
the South, and shafts to Union soldiers are 
scattered generally through the North — all typ- 
ical of respect to causes, and the heroes who 
perished in defense of them. Standing in the 
harbor at New York, holding aloft the torch of 



164 Perfected Woodcraft 

liberty and civilization to the world, whose 
lifted light the far-off traveler may see, is the 
great statue which France gave to America, 
in appreciation of those principles upon which 
the Western Eepublic is founded. 

In erecting memorial slabs we emphasize 
and solemnly reaffirm, year in, year out, our 
enthusiasm and our faith, and at the same time 
make it easy that the sterling qualities of those 
memorialized be instilled into the coming gen- 
eration. Our memorial halls and tablets and 
shafts are as great incentives as exist today to 
the youth of the land to emulate the example 
of the worthies they commemorate. They 
stand before them drinking inspiration when 
suddenly they hear the rythm of moving hosts 
suggested by the likeness of the soldier, or the 
great chorus of life in the embrazoned Goddess 
of Liberty, and amid the awful orchestra of 
seen and unseen powers their hearts heave with 
the burst of a new hope, a new courage. 

Amid the unnumbered hosts of the youth 
of earth whom in my imagination I can 
see standing before the tombs of the mighty, 
and with high resolves determining to model 
their own careers after those upon the marble 
likenesses of whom they are intently gazing, 
I see an uncouth boy of sixteen years. The 
stone upon which he gazes is not the tallest, 
nor yet the most polished spire, nor that most 
fancifully carved and beautifully decorated. 



Perfected Woodcraft 165 

It is chiseled in the unmistakable likeness of 
a fallen tree, broken by the destructive wind 
of a winter's storm or riven by a sudden blast 
of lurid lightning. The boy stands there, his 
mother on his arm, his younger dependent 
brothers and sisters huddled about him, his 
slouch hat in hand, worn clothes hanging pit- 
eously to him, himself gaunt and awkward. 
A tear makes its way down his sun-tanned, 
hardened cheek. Before the slab of broken oak 
a billow of earth six feet in length — six feet of 
honest dirt, the last abode of an honest man, 
and the last piece of real estate the individual 
is allowed to occupy. That grave is his fath- 
er's. That stone is the emblem of his father's 
fraternal order, the Woodmen of the World. 
The latter, at a clear cost of one hundred dol- 
lars, has just placed it at his father's head, at 
not one cent of charge to him. 

Mingled feelings rise in the young man's 
bosom. Upon his shoulders have lately fallen 
the burdens of the household and family up- 
keep. Thank God, the insurance policy from 
the Woodmen was forthcoming, and was 
promptly paid! Thank God, the world should 
know> through the liberality of the brotherhood 
with which that sire had shown the good sense 
and forethought to affiliate himself, that they 
at least had not forgotten him ! The boy im- 
bibes an added courage and manliness, and de- 



166 Perfected Woodcraft 

termines anew to walk unwaveringly in the 
footsteps of the sire. 

What a determination ! Perhaps some boy 
who reads these lines has made the same high 
resolve. If so, boy, you but know the gen- 
uineness of that faith in men, that anxiety for 
human fellowship to be continued on and on 
into the limitless eternities, which filled the 
heart of Father Boot when early in the history 
of the Woodmen of the World he introduced 
the monument feature in the gloriously 
planned an flourishing Craft which was the 
genial and flourishing child of his great mind. 

One of the three cardinal tenets of the 
Order, the one that completes the trio, after 
love and honor have been given the Sovereign, 
is remembrance. Remembrance — Oh, the my- 
riad and wonderful and beautifully radiant 
types of memory evidences! Oh, the deep-set 
recollections in the hearts of men, of those 
who have gone before — deep-graven, ineffacable. 

And what is the great significance of the 
feature? In mausoleum and pyramid, in pyre 
and giant obelisk, in column and triumphal 
arch, in roadway and acqueduct, in tower and 
castle, we find the deeds of heroes and dis- 
tinguished citizens. And the only gap in all 
the world's monuments is for the simple slab 
that Woodcraft builds to the ordinary man! 
I do not recall reading in all the histories of 
the rise and fall of all the empires, oligarchies, 



Perfected Woodcraft 167 

monarchies, and even republics, that monu- 
ments were ever erected to individual citizens 
without distinction and without fame. And 
this, notwithstanding the fact that 
"The bold peasantry, their country's pride, 
Who, "'when once destroyed, can never be sup- 
plied,—" 
have done the fighting, worked the roads, built 
the stately edifices to honor the kings and 
czars and emperors, — their masters, — all the 
way from the pyramids of Egypt to Trajan's 
Column, Napoleon's tomb, and Westminster 
Abbey; yet they have been given little glory 
and absolutely no physical memorial as a trib- 
ute to their services and their work. Oh, to be 
sure, we sometimes go into a cemetery and rest 
our eyes upon a bewildering maze of little 
slabs, all alike and all little, unmarked and by 
the thousands, which, thanks to the liberality 
of some Congress, commemorate the valor of 
our soldiery. Even these are of a late date. 
But where— Oh, WHEEE— is to be found a 
single shaft dedicated to the memory of the 
worthy, the honorable, the faithful bread-win- 
ner, the family head, who through all life's 
toilsome pathway, in a war for work and 
wages wherewith to "keep the wolf away," has 
"trod the winepress alone" to the bitter end? 
Par from being remembered by the world he 
served, he has gone down to his grave 
"Unwept, unhonored and unsung." 



168 Perfected Woodcraft 

It is one of the most striking features of 
our Order's work — this anxiety to remember 
in a practical way, not only by the support of 
the families dependent upon its membership, 
but in the memorial shaft, the worth of the 
ordinary' man, who never fought a battle with 
a spear, a musket or a cannon — the peace cit- 
izen. And it is very noticeable that Wood- 
craft does a thing which now we see for the 
first time in universal history. It builds a 
monument to the ordinary citizen, who has 
never risen to the kingship or presidency, nor 
held aloft the standard of that country in a 
time of war — the simple peace citizen who has 
walked the humbler walk of life, doing his 
plain and simple duty in his plain and simple 
way, toiling _under God's favor by day and 
sleeping in His care by night; in whose heart 
has rested always faith and simple goodliness 
and sweet content. And this is an integral 
part of the fraternity's glorious mission. It 
signifies that the humble laborer, uncollared 
and without the starched an studded shirt 
front, unglamored by the halo of military prow- 
ess, undistinguished by the unusual, deserves 
to be remembered at the hands of his associ- 
ates and fellows — by the nation he helps to 
glorify and elevate among the nations of the 
earth — the same as does the proudest poten- 
tate, the richest captain of industry and high 



Perfected Woodcraft 169 

finance, the mightiest magnate, the austerest 
statesman and the bloodiest soldier! 

Finally, Woodcraft perpetuates and pop- 
ularizes itself every time it plants a simple 
rustic headstone at the grave of a Sovereign. 
It serves the double purpose of honoring the 
dead by giving expression to the fraternity's 
respect for those whom he loved most dearly 
upon earth, and at the same time giving "unto 
him and not unto us" the "praise for his wise 
forethought in conferring upon us the privilege 
of comforting the bereaved ones for whom he 
has provided." The monument which the 
Order places at his head stands as a beacon 
to watch over his ashes and light the path his 
soul shall tread, up to the Father's throne! In 
the dumb mystery of speechless eloquence it 
sentinels the glory of Perfected Woodcraft. 
In commercial parly, it is a speaking, magnetic 
advertisement for the cause of the Craft. "It 
tells a story mute and motionless. It glorifies 
life; it idealizes death. Passionless, immov- 
able, stern and unyielding, it symbolizes the 
faith of humanity." 



CHAPTEE X. 
THE NEW W. O. W. BUILDING 

From the pen of C. A. Patterson, published 
in the "Building Management" Journal at Chi- 
cago I quote: 

The strides in skyscraper development 
have been astonishing even to those who are 
actually factors in big building activity. 

Some buildings have achieved greatness by 
size, others have become prominent by their 
height, but the Woodmen of the World build- 
ing in Omaha lays claim to respectful atten- 
tion because of its wonderful equipment and 
service to its tenants. 

It demonstrates the vital connection be- 
tween the construction and equipment and 
the returns on the investment. 

The Woodmen of the World building is 
an excellent example of spending the money 
where it will be most appreciated by the ten- 
ant, who, after all, is the deciding factor on 
the success of an office building. 

In this article there will be no attempt to 
describe the Woodmen of the World building 
in the average prosaic description of a build- 
ing, but simply to write the impressions of 
this skyscraper from the standpoint of a per- 
sonally conducted tour. 

The building is eighteen stories high with 
an attic for electric machinery, giving a height 
of nineteen stories above the basement, but 



Perfected Woodcraft 171 

while not unusual in size, the brains of the 
architect, the building committee and the build- 
ing specialist were concentrated in the idea 
of making a distinctive building and no money 
has been spared to accomplish this purpose. 
A World-Wide Search for New Ideas 

This country and even Europe was 
gleaned for practical innovations and as a re- 
sult the very best features of buildings every- 
where have been introduced in the Woodmen of 
the World building. 

The building is owned by the Woodmen of 
the World fraternity as its national headquar- 
ters. To adapt it for the purpose with a res- 
ervation of space for commercial and club oc- 
cupancy was a problem that has been success- 
fully solved by the capable building committee 
composed by Joseph Cullen Eoot the Founder 
of the order and its Sovereign Commander; 
William A. Fraser, Sovereign Adviser; John 
T. Yates, Sovereign Clerk; and James E. Fitz- 
gerald and Napoleon B. Maxey, Sovereign Man- 
agers, under whose supervision has been con- 
structed and equipped the building. 

Holabird and Eoche, Chicago, with whom 
were associated Fisher and Laurie of Omaha, 
were the architects, and John M. Walshe, tem- 
porary building manager, also acted in an ad- 
visory capacity under direction of the building 
committee. Seldon Brick Construction Com- 
pany of St. Louis were the contractors. 



172 Perfected Woodcraft 

The building was started July 17, 1911, 
and was officially dedicated in October, 1912, 
On March first eighty-five per cent of 
the building was leased, which is a remarkable 
record when one appreciates that the first ten- 
ants did not move in until December, 1912 
and the renting season has only just com- 
menced. 

Almost a thousand persons occupy offices 
in the building and the occupancy is so diversi- 
fied that within its four walls can be found 
almost everything within the need of mankind. 
The Building From the Outside 

Being the newest and highest building in 
Omaha, naturally the W. O. W. building is con- 
spicuous. The exterior is built of pink gran- 
ite base, white terra cotta and red brick, with 
panels in relief of the emblems of the society. 
The effect of this can be seen from the illustra- 
tion. A row of electric lights are encased in 
the cornices at the top of the building. Un- 
like most exterior decorative lighting, howev- 
er, the powerful reflectors direct this light 
toward the sidewalk and the lights themselves 
are not visible. The brilliant outlining of the 
building at night is both unique and artistic. 
The Lobby and Lighting Effects 

Entering the building by a niotor driven 
revolving door, we find a lobby that should be 
seen to be appreciated. The grand stairway 
winds up over the outside vestibule. The most 



Perfected Woodcraft 173 

distinctive feature here is the lighting scheme* 
Up marble steps at the head of the stairway 
in the balcony on either side are located four 
large bronze urns of Egyptian design. Each 
contains a concealed 500-watt Mazda and mir- 
rored reflector. This reflects the light to the 
paneled gold leaf ceiling several feet above. 
The illumination is so well distributed and 
the light source so carefully hidden that it is 
quite mystifying to the unitiated. Many be- 
lieve that actual sunlight is illuminating the 
lobby. 

The vestibule elevator lobby and ante-room 
to vault are all lighted by large bronze fix- 
tures of the semi-indirect type with beautiful 
shapes of etched glass. On the pilasters out- 
side on either side of the main entrance are 
two large bronze torches with 400-watt units. 
The elevators are laid out in two banks of 
three each, on either side of the elevator lobby, 
which is just back of the staircases described 
above. 

The elevators on the first and second floors 
are back of solid bronze grills, which are 
backed with clear plate glass, which keeps 
back the tremendous draft that is always evi- 
dent in elevator shafts. 

On either side of a lobby set in a corner 
of the pilasters 6 feet 6 inches from the floor 
are two sets of "position indicators," one for 
each bank of elevators. They are so arranged 



174 Perfected Woodcraft 

that the starter can stand at any door to a car 
and see the position of every other car and still 
face the main entrance. Every action of the 
car and public in the main entrance of the 
building is under the constant and watchful 
eye of the elevator starter. At night and on 
Sundays and holidays a switch turns these 
position indicators into annunciators. Under 
one of the position indicators, easily accessible, 
is located a set of six push buttons, one con- 
nected to a button concealed in each car, so 
the starter may govern the operator during all 
portions of his trip. Back of the elevators on 
one side is the directory of new type as made 
by the C. M. Kinney Company, New York. The 
name strips are removable and made up in 
the office and easily placed in the board. Back 
of this and facing the main entrance is the 
large vault and ante-room. This vault is a 
mammoth affair and holds the |18,000,000 
bonds of the emergency fund of the Woodmen 
of the World, also the bonds of the Woodmen 
Circle. 

Opposite the directory is a door into the 
freight passage which leads directly from the 
alley at the rear of the building to the combin- 
ation freight and passenger elevator, which is 
the rear car of the right hand bank. The side 
folds back against the back of this car and 
gives free passage of large packages directly 
through iron doors to the freight passage, so 



Perfected Woodcraft 175 

that no freight, express, or other packages 
come through the raain lobby. Freight is re- 
ceived only between 7 a. m. and 10 a. m. and 
3 p. m. and 5 p. m. This freight passage acts 
as a rear entrance to all, but two, of the stores 
on the first floor. 

Features in Elevators 

In the elevator cabs themselves one finds 
many original, clever and efficient ideas. The 
threshold light, which is advantageously placed 
in the post of the cab and through a glass pro- 
tected opening, throws a reflected light across 
the threshold, perfectly illuminating the thresh- 
old and car platform. The sides of the cars 
are solidly paneled in red gum 5 feet 3 inches 
high. The car switch is a special design and 
enclosed in cabinet work. The floor is cov- 
ered with specially designed corrugated perfor- 
ated %-inch rubber mats, furnished by W. H. 
Salisbury and Co., Chicago. 

The signal system, however, is the most 
noticeable innovation. The post on either side 
of the cab entrance is 2 inches in diameter 
and of solid bronze and inside this post are lo- 
cated the signal and threshold lamps. The 
signal lamps show through two bull's eyes di- 
rectly in front of the operator 18 inches apart, 
so in going either up or down the operator's 
natural tendency is to look in the direction 
in which he is going, and with these lamps so 
placed he cannot fail to see a signal. He there- 



176 Perfected Woodcraft 

fore does not have to turn his attention away 
from the opening at all, and he is always in 
perfect position to protect the opening of the 
cab. This post also contains the two push 
button switches which are located directly 
under the natural place for the operator's gate 
hand. He may operate either switch without 
any effort or annoyance. 

The usual unhandy safety device is one 
with its large wheel set on the side of the cab. 
It is almost an impossibility for the operator 
to operate this device in time to prevent the 
car sriking the bottom in case of accident. 
The safety arrangement in these cars has been 
cleverly worked into the car switch and the 
crank and handle are but a few inches below 
the car switch handle and ready at all times 
for instantaneous action. The operator has 
only to drop his hand a few inches and turn 
a crank in case of emergency. 

The lighting fixture is built right in the 
top of the cab and is made a part of it. Safety 
doors almost unnoticeable are provided in each 
car so that if a car should get stuck in the 
shaft the operator unlocks the safety door and 
the passengers can step into the next car, 
which can be run up to the level of the first car. 
Gates That Canisot Spring Open 

All the elevator gates are specially con- 
structed. The usual latch handle is lengthened 
to over twelve inches and it requires a one- 



Perfected Woodcraft 177 

quarter turn of the knurled rod to draw the 
latch down to release the gate. 

The latch at the top has three steps, which 
allows the gates to be open up to five inches 
and yet be locked. This feature eliminates the 
usual danger of gates rebounding and remain- 
ing unlocked, because if thees particular gates 
do rebound they usually catch on the second 
step and if by any possible chance the latch 
misses this it is sure to catch on the third step. 

In the lobby it is noticed that the individ- 
ual corrugated and perforated mat in front 
of each elevator is set flush with the landing in 
sunken brass bound recesses in the tile floor. 

The signal system is entirely different 
than the usual type of extending lanterns. 
There are two bull's eyes about four inches 
in diameter set in a box flush with the face of 
the elevator enclosure and on the right side of 
the elevator doors six feet six inches from the 
floor to the center of the bull's eye. This 
places all the signals in the range of vision 
of any one waiting for a car and gives instant 
and direct notice of the next car. This scheme 
was worked out after many hours of careful 
study of the actions of the tenants and patrons 
of an office building. Even the height at which 
the signal lamp should be placed was actually 
tested out before being decided upon. Mr. 
Walshe mentioned this at the national conven- 
tion last year. 



178 Perfected Woodcraft 

Another unique idea of this signal lantern 
is that the back facing into the elevator shaft 
is glass and its position is directly in line with 
the operator's vision; therefore, adding an ex- 
tra signal should he by any chance miss those 
in the post of the car. 

The upper portion of the building is "L" 
shaped and corridors leading from the elevator 
stair fill the corner nicely, making use of this 
lobby into each wing. The elevators take 
usually undesirable space. The smoke stacks 
run upon the outer wall just back of one bank 
of elevators. 

Prism Glass in All Top Sashes 

The brick lining of the stack forms an out- 
er stack which carries the air from the ex- 
haust fan and ventilates the engine and boil- 
er rooms in addition to keeping the stack cool 
and giving a better draft. 

The floors in the corridoi are ceramic mo- 
saic of three-quarter square tile with white 
field and black border. The wainscot is of 
Colorado marble thirty inches high. Above 
this the borrowed lights are filled with prism 
plate glass. The corridors are perfectly light- 
ed by natural daylight, and by artificial light 
if necessary during the day. Every top sash 
in every outside double hung window is filled 
with prism plate glass which perfectly lights 
the inner offices of all suites and corridors. 
This glass also diffuses the direct rays and 



Perfected Woodcraft 179 

heat of the sun and greatly lessens the usual 
objection to offices facing west. 

This building has the largest installation 
of prism glass in the world. Some doubt has 
been expressed about the cleaning of the glass, 
as several managers have stated that it would 
be impossible to keep this glass clean. The 
window washers of the W. O. W. building, 
who are experienced men, declare, however, 
that they clean within ten of as many windows 
per day as they could if they were clear plate 
glass. They average about eighty to ninety 
windows a day, which renders the difference 
in cost negligible in comparison with the great 
advantage. 

Noteworthy Features in Hardware 

The janitor and fire hose closets are lo- 
cated at the ends of the elevator shafts, ac- 
cessible, convenient and well aid out for ef- 
ficient operation. The pipe shaft opens off the 
janitor's closet and contains all the main ris- 
ers in the building. 

The hardware on the doors presents an- 
other innovation. A special design letter plate 
on one side matching the escutcheon and knob 
on the outer rail is a noteworthy feature. 
Eixson checks are on all doors throughout, 
even inner office doors. Every door in the 
building is fitted with a cylinder lock of the 
same pattern. All utility doors, such as toilets 
pipe shafts, janitor's closets, public doors, and 



180 Perfected Woodcraft 

all doors in employes' and working quarters 
are fitted for Grand Master key. Each floor 
is Master keyed, and these Master keys are 
hung on large tags and kept in the office. A 
"Manager's key" is a new idea, being the first 
installation of its kind. This key, when put 
in the cylinder of any lock in the building, will 
throw the thumb bolt on the inner side of the 
door, locking out all other keys. 

One Way to Cure a Negligent Tenant 
If a tenant fails to pay his rent, the man- 
ager simply uses this key in the lock and the 
tenant must come to him to arrange to open 
the door, as no other key will open it. If a 
tenant wishes his door locked against all other 
keys during absence from city or vacation, or 
any other cause, this key serves the purpose. 
A key cabinet in the manager's office is so laid 
out that all keys in the building are instantly 
accessible. The system comprises a cabinet 
with a hook for each door on each floor in hor- 
izontal lines. The floors are numbered vertic- 
ally to the offices horizontally; therefore, to 
find a key, find the floor and move to the right 
to find the office number. Each hook contains 
a tag giving full decription of key and location 
of lock. A key receipt appears on the hook, 
also, for all keys missing, keeping a positive 
check on all keys. At the bottom is a row of 
hooks for miscellaneous keys. Here also are 
two extra cylinders for each floor properly set 



Perfected Woodcraft 181 

in holes prepared and marked for them. 
Should a key be lost or taken at any time, the 
old cylinder is taken out of the door and one 
of the extra cylinders put in, and the keys ex- 
changed on two hooks and all identity of that 
cylinder is lost, as it is impossible to say when 
or where that cylinder will be used again. 

The toilets on every floor are locked and 
all office keys fit the toilets. 

Something New in the Phone System 

The intercommunicating 'phone system is 
advantageously used in this building. 

A house telephone system connects to all 
departments, and a phone in the corridor of 
each floor. The push buttons are on a separate 
circuit, and any push button will ring five 
bells located at different portions of the build- 
ing. Each head of department has a call, and 
the manager or any of his assistants can be 
reached over this phone within a minute. In 
addition to this by a clever scheme of wiring 
this bell system is connected to the bell 'phone 
in the manager's office and at night a switch 
is thrown over which connects an extension 
'pone in the combination freight and passenger 
elevator, and at the same time throws into 
service a connection which will ring all the 
house 'phone bells, so that should the manager 
or any tenant want to reach the night watch- 
man, no matter where he may be in the build- 
ing, he could hear the house bells and im- 



182 Perfected Woodcraft 

mediately go to the telephone in the elevator 
and answer the call. This car, being used by 
the nightwatchman, is always on the floor in 
which he is making his rounds. Another fea- 
ture is added to the house 'phone system and 
that is that a lock cylinder is placed outside 
the front door of the building where a push but- 
ton would be set, and all office keys will fit this 
cylinder, which is connected electrically with 
the bells of the house 'phone system, so that 
should a tenant want to get in after the build- 
ing is locked up he simply inserts his office 
key in this cylinder and turns the cylnder, 
which action rings all the bells on the house 
phone system and the watchman, no matter 
where he is, hears the signal and immediately 
lets the tenant in. Some managers seem to 
think this system of 'phone service would be 
abused, but it has not proved so, and has been 
a great success in operating the building. 
Thorougness in Eecord Keeping 
A slip card system is used to keep a record 
of the tenants and information concerning 
them. All communications between depart- 
ments are made on pads in duplicate, the orig- 
inal goes to the department to receive the order, 
the copy goes to the manager's office, and is 
held there in a "Tickler" system until the orig- 
inal is sent back with notation that order has 
been filled, or reason for not doing so. No 
verbal orders are given. All orders for new 



Perfected Woodcraft 183 

work must be approved. Eequisitions for ma- 
terial are all handled in his way and this noti- 
fies each department when his material has 
been ordered and of whom. 



LIBRARY. OF.. fiOJJ^SI • 



027 273 718 6, 



